Read "The Old and the New" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
As a mother who dies in travail -- / Who closes her eyes in death, / And sinks in the sleep that is long and deep, / With her babe's first wailing breath, / In the hush of the midnight watches, / So, the old year passed away, / And the new was born, and was hailed this morn, / As the "Happy New Year Day."
The day when our eyes look backward, / To see what our hands have done, / Through the hours of gold that the dead year told, / Like the beads of a pious Nun -- / When we shut up the blotted ledger, / With its record of joy and grief, / Of losses and gains, and pleasures and pains, / And turn to the new white leaf