Page:Poems Toke.djvu/82

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LINES.

T is the birth-morn of another year,
Which from her mother's ashes bounding forth,
With silent footsteps rises on the world,
Like her to dawn, like her to pass away.
Hail! child of Time! what thousand eyes now turn
To mark with anxious gaze thy being's morn,
And strive to scan thine unrevealed career!
But o'er thy future hours a veil is cast,—
To some of laughing hues both bright and gay,
Thick strewn with hope's glad forms of coming joy;
To others dark and sad, for many a heart
Still feels the clouds of yon departed year
O'ercast her daughter's untried scenes with gloom,
And clothe the visioned Future's dreamy forms
With shades of sorrow past. Yet hail to thee!
I look with hope upon thy coming hours,
And trust that mercies, boundless as the past,
May still encompass round my onward way.

'Tis Winter's noon of darkness. Nature sleeps
In dreariness and death, awaiting still
The spring-time sunshine to dispel her gloom,
And clothe again with beauty all her scenes.
I will go forth and breathe the chilling air,