Good-bye, old year, good-bye! <br />Gentle you were to many as to me, <br />And so we, meditating, sigh, <br />Since what hath been will be, <br />That you must die. <br />Hark! In the crumbling grey church tower, <br />Tolls the recording bell <br />The deeply-sounding solemnising knell <br />For your last hour. <br /> <br />How quietly you die! <br />No canonisëd Saint <br />E'er put life by <br />With less of struggle or complaint. <br />You seem to feel nor grief nor pain, <br />No retrospection vain, <br />As if, departing, you would have us know <br />It is not hard to go, <br />Since pang is none, but only peace, in Death, <br />And Life it is that suffereth. <br /> <br />Closer and clearer comes the last slow knell, <br />And on my lip for you awaits <br />That final formula of Fate's, <br />The low, lamenting, lingering word, Farewell! <br />For you the curved-backed sexton need not stir <br />The mould, for there is nothing to inter, <br />No worn integument to doff, <br />No bodily corruption to put off; <br />Begotten of the earth and sun, <br />And ending spirit-wise as you begun, <br />You pass, a mere memento of the mind, <br />Leaving no lees behind. <br /> <br />Hark! What is that we hear? <br />A quick-jerked, jocund peal, <br />Making the fretted church tower reel, <br />Telling the wakeful of a young New Year, <br />Young, but of lusty birth, <br />To face the masked vicissitudes of earth. <br /> <br />Let us, then, look not back, <br />Though smooth and partial was the track <br />Of the receding Past, <br />But through the vista vast <br />Of unknown Future wend intrepid way, <br />Framed to contend and cope <br />With perils new by vanished yesterday, <br />Whose last bequests to Man are Love, and <br />Faith, and Hope.<br /><br />Alfred Austin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-farewell-15/
