Poems (Follen)/New Year's Day

by Eliza Lee Cabot Follen

NEW YEAR'S DAY.

A year; another year, is gone:
 Time never stops: each day
He, the destroyer, hurries on,
 And bears some spoil away.

What does he steal? youth's sparkling eye,
 Its roseate cheek, and sunny hair,
Its bounding step of ecstacy,—
 These are the trophies time must wear.

But can he touch the heavenly soul?
 Alas! his icy fingers there
Usurp a withering control,
 And scarce one glory spare.

But love still on the wreck survives,
 The first to live, the last to die:
Amidst the waste it smiling lives,
 And tells of immortality.