Fugitive Poetry. 1600–1878/The Masque of the New Year

The Masque of The New Year.

"So forth issew'd the Seasons of the Years."—Spenser.

Out from tower and from steeple rang the sudden New Year bells,
Like the chorusing of genii in aerial citadels;
And, as they chimed and echoed overthwart the gulfs of gloom,
Lo, a brilliance burst upon me, and a Masque went through the room.

First, the young New Year came forward like a little dancing child,
And his hair was as a glory, and his eyes were bright and wild:
And he shook an odorous torch, and he laughed but did not speak,
And his smile went softly rippling through the roses of his cheek.

Round he looked across his shoulder:—and the Spirit of the Spring
Entered slowly, moved before me, paused and lingered on the wing;
And she smiled and wept together, with a dalliance quaint and sweet,
And her tear-drops changed to flowers underneath her gliding feet.

Then a landscape opened outwards, broad brown woodlands stretched away
In the luminous blue distance of a windy-clear March day;
And at once the branches kindled with a light of hovering green,
And grew vital in the sunshine as the spirit passed between.

Birds flashed about the copses, striking sharp notes through the air;
Danced the lambs within the meadows; crept the snake from out his lair;
Soft as shadow sprang the violets, thousands seeming but as one;
Flamed the crocuses beside them, like gold droppings of the sun.

And the Goddess of the Spring—that spirit tender and benign—
Squeezed a vapoury cloud which vanished into heaven's crystal wine;
And she faded in the distance where the thickening leaves were piled;
And the New Year had grown older, and no longer was a child.

 

II.

Summer, shaking languid roses from his dew-bedabbled hair,
Summer, in a robe of green, and with his arms and shoulders bare,
Next came forward; and the richness of his pageants filled the eye;
Breadths of English meadows basking underneath the happy sky.

Long grass swayin g in the playing of the almost wearied breeze;
Flowers bowed beneath a crowd of the yellow-armoured bees;
Sumptuous forests filled with twilight, like a dreamy old romance;
Rivers falling, rivers calling, in their indolent advance;

Crimson heath-bells making regal all the solitary places;
Dominant light, that pierces down into the deep blue water spaces;
Sun-uprisings, and sun-settings, and intensities of noon;
Purple darkness of the midnight, and the glory of the moon;

Rapid, rosy-tinted lightnings, where the rocky clouds are riven,
Like the lifting of a veil before the inner courts of heaven;
Silver stars in azure evenings, slowly climbing up the steep;
Cornfields ripening to the harvest, and the wide seas smooth with sleep.

Circled with those living splendours, Summer passed from out my sight;
Like a dream that filled with beauty all the caverns of the night!
And the vision and the presence into empty nothing ran—
And the New Year was still older, and seemed now a youthful man.

 

III.

Autumn! Forth from glowing orchards stepped he gaily in a gown
Of warm russet freaked with gold, and with a vision sunny brown;
On his head a rural chaplet, wreathed with heavily drooping grapes,
And broad shadow-casting vine leaves like the Bacchanalian shapes.

Fruits and berries rolled before him from the year's exhausted horn;
Jets of wine went spinning upwards, and he held a sheaf of corn:
And he laughed for very joy, and he danced from too much pleasure,
And he sang old songs of harvest, and he quaffed a mighty measure.

But above this wild delight an overmastering graveness rose,
And the fields and trees seemed thoughtful in their absolute repose:
And I saw the woods consuming in a many-coloured death—
Streaks of yellow flame down-deepening through the green that lingereth.

Sanguine flashes, like a sunset, and austerely shadowing brown;
And I heard, within the silence, the nuts sharply rattling down:
And I saw the long dark hedges all alight with scarlet fire,
Where the berries, pulpy-ripe, had spread their bird-feasts on the briar.

I beheld the southern vineyards, and the hop-grounds of our land,
Sending gusts of fragrance outwards, nearly to the salt sea strand;
Saw the windy moors rejoicing in their tapestry of fern,
And the stately weeds and rushes, that to dusty dryness turn.

Autumn walked in glee and triumph over mountain, wood, and plain,
And he looked upon their richness as a king on his domain:
All too soon he waned and vanished over misty heath and meres—
And the New Year stood beside me like a man of fifty years.

 

IV.

In a foggy cloud obscurely, entered Winter, ashy pale,
And his step was hard and heavy, and he wore an icy mail;
Blasting all the path before him, leapt a black wind from the north,
And from stinging drifts of sleet he forged the arrows of his wrath.

Yet some beauty still was found, for when the fogs had passed away,
The wide lands came glittering forward in a fresh and strange array;
Naked trees had got snow foliage, soft, and feathery, and bright,
And the earth looked dressed for heaven in its spiritual white.

Black and cold as iron armour lay the frozen lakes and streams;
Round about the fenny plashes shone the long and pointed gleams
Of the tall reeds, ice-encrusted; the old hollies jewel-spread,
Warmed the white marmoreal chillness with an ardency of red.

Upon desolate morasses stood the heron like a ghost,
Beneath the gliding shadows of the wild fowls' noisy host;
And the bittern clamoured harshly from his nest among the sedge
Where the indistinct dull moss had blurred the rugged water's edge.

But the face of Winter softened, and his lips broke into smiles,
And his heart was filled with radiance as from far-enchanted isles;
For across the long horizon came a light upon the way—
The light of Christmas fires, and the dawning of new day.

And Winter moved not onward like the rest, but made a stand,
And took the Spirit of Christmas, as a brother, by the hand;
And together toward the heavens a great cry of joy they sent—
And the New Year was the Old Year, and his head was grey and bent.

Then another New Year entered, like another dancing child,
With his tresses as a glory, and his glances bright and wild;
And he flashed his odorous torch, and he laughed out in the place,
And his soul looked forth in joy and made a sunshine on his face.

Out from spire, and from turret, pealed the sudden New Year bells,
Like the distant songs of angels in their fields of asphodels;
And that lustrous child went sparkling to his aged father's side,
And the New Year kissed the Old Year, and the Old Year gently died.