Farewell, thou dying year!
Thy May's sweet breath, and Spring's sweet tune,
Thy witching smiles of gentle June,
Thy solemn Autumn sere.

Farewell, thy sun and song,
Thy melody of birds and brooks,
Thy bounding heart and happy looks,
And all thy fairy throng.

The midnight comes; we part!
The midnight-hour belongs to Death:
'T is here; his hand is on thy breath,
His ice is on thy heart.

Behold, they dig thy grave,
They weave thy snowy shroud, O friend!
How short thy life, how swift thine end!
A passing wind, or wave.

Thy phantom life is o'er:
And till, at Christ's great Judgment-seat,
Thy record of our deeds we meet,
We'll see thy face no more.

How strangely thou hast fled!
How like the swift ship's foamy spray,
How like a dream hast passed away,
To mingle with the dead:

To join the deepening gloom,
And dust of buried years gone by,
Where silent, mouldering Ages lie,—
The eternal Past their tomb.

O'er thee shall many a tear
Of bitterness and grief be shed,
And many a hope and heart lies dead
Within thy grave, O Year!

With thee the Mighty sleep;
The eloquent, the wise, the good,
They who of all men foremost stood,
For whom whole nations weep;

And many a loving maid,
Wife, husband, parent, child, and friend,
Who hailed thy birth saw not thine end,
But in thy tomb are laid.

For them is that deep moan
That sighs in empty hearts whose light
Is out, in homes which death's dark night
Makes desolate and lone.

Farewell to thee and them!
I hear the midnight's mournful breeze,
On harpstrings of bare, leafless trees,
Chanting thy requiem!