Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE YEAR IS DONE, by MIRIAM DEL BANCO


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE YEAR IS DONE, by                    
First Line: The year is done. Upon june's tender breast
Last Line: A glorious era dawns! A golden age is born!
Subject(s): Holidays; New Year


The year is done. Upon June's tender breast
The bygone months like tinted blossoms rest;
Sweet on the summer air the wind's low whine
Bears on its perfumed wings a silent chime.
Where lily-bells ring out the mystic flight of time.

Deep in the tangled wood the wild rose burns,
Its fragrant lamp: the dreamy bluebird turns
Into a floating blossom on the breeze;
The silken grasses rustle; murmuring trees
Make music with the golden-girdled honeybees.

The year is done. Fling wide the open door!
Seek out the pen, the printed page, no more!
Hear ye not voices calling, sweet and low,
From spray-wreathed shore, from tinted orchard snow,
From where the spicy pines o'er moonlit meadows blow?

The year is done. Its myriad voices blend
With others far away. We near the end.
Soon shall we close, with reverend hand, the white
And sacred books, whose page we dared to write,
Whose chapter to illume, whose silvery threads unite.

What have we written there? How much survives
To broaden and enrich the little lives
That touched our own? Into what pathways new
That make for greatness have we led?
What clue disclosed to find the good, the beautiful, the true

Ah, who shall say? Yet 'tis our hand that throws
To universal youth love's shadow-rose;
Bright rainbows flash athwart the crystal showers;
And from our hearts, for childhood's early hours,
Steals back the tender fragrance of their cradle-flowers.

Far in the shadow-land of the "To be,"
Another year's bright entrance arch I see;
There confidence and power rule the year,
While o'er its gleaming gate these words appear:
"Distrust and doubt abandon, all who enter here."

Yes, for our cultured teachers never can
Be aught but ladies true and gentlemen:
Theirs is the great, the white-robed brotherhood,
Whose salient force can seldom be withstood,
Whose influence can ne'er be otherwise than good.

By them, the current of electric thought
Has trailed the night with stars; their will has wrought
Great fields of culture that to mete divides;
The knowledge that is joy; the power that glides
From man to man, and yet fore'er abides.

Is here no vict'ry? Yet the import vast
Of coming time shall far outshine the past;
And yet, our eager hearts fore'er are strained
Out toward the "just beyond," the unattained;—
Not what we did, but what we sought to do, we've gained.

Ours for a time be tranquil ease and rest,
Clasped all day long to Nature's throbbing breast;
But when September sounds her silvery horn,
Up to the mountain peaks, where glows the morn!
A glorious era dawns! A golden age is born!





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