Explore "The Old Year and the New" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I. As one in sorrow looks upon / The dead face of a loyal friend, / By the dim light of New Year's dawn / I saw the Old Year end.
Upon the pallid features lay / The dear old smile -- so warm and bright / Ere thus its cheer had died away / In ashes of delight.
The hands that I had learned to love / With strength of passion half divine, / Were folded now, all heedless of / The emptiness of mine.
The eyes that once had shed their bright / Sweet looks like sunshine, now were dull, / And ever lidded from the light / That made them beautiful.
II. The chimes of bells were in the air, / And sounds of mirth in hall and street, / With pealing laughter everywhere / And throb of dancing feet:
The mirth and the convivial din / Of revelers in wanton glee, / With tunes of harp and violin / In tangled harmony.
But with a sense of nameless dread, / I turned me, from the merry face / Of this newcomer, to my dead; / And, kneeling there a space,
I sobbed aloud, all tearfully: -- / By this dear face so fixed and cold, / O Lord, let not this New Year be / As happy as the old!