I. <br />Orphan Hours, the Year is dead, <br />Come and sigh, come and weep! <br />Merry Hours, smile instead, <br />For the Year is but asleep. <br />See, it smiles as it is sleeping, <br />Mocking your untimely weeping. <br /> <br />II. <br />As an earthquake rocks a corse <br />In its coffin in the clay, <br />So White Winter, that rough nurse, <br />Rocks the death-cold Year to-day; <br />Solemn Hours! wail aloud <br />For your mother in her shroud. <br /> <br />III. <br />As the wild air stirs and sways <br />The tree-swung cradle of a child, <br />So the breath of these rude days <br />Rocks the Year:—be calm and mild, <br />Trembling Hours, she will arise <br />With new love within her eyes. <br /> <br />IV. <br />January gray is here, <br />Like a sexton by her grave; <br />February bears the bier, <br />March with grief doth howl and rave, <br />And April weeps--but, O ye Hours! <br />Follow with May's fairest flowers.<br /><br />Percy Bysshe Shelley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dirge-for-the-year/
