THE MASQUE OF THE NEW YEAR.

Auon.

'So forth isseu'd the seasons of the Yeare.'-SPENSER.

I.

Our from tower and from steeple rang the sudden New Year bells,

Like the chorusing of genii in aërial citadels; And, as they chimed and echoed overthwart the gulfs of gloom,

Lo! a brilliance burst upon me, and a Masque went through the room.

First the young New Year came forward, like a little dancing child;

And his hair was as a glory, and his eyes were bright and wild;

And he shook an odorous torch, and he laughed, but did not speak,

And his smile went softly rippling through the roses of his cheek.

Round he look'd across his shoulder :—and the Spirit of the Spring

Enter'd softly, moved before me, paused and linger'd on the wing;

За

And she smiled and wept together with a dalliance quaint and sweet,

And her teardrops changed to flowers underneath her gliding feet.

Then a landscape open'd outwards; broad brown woodlands stretch'd away

In the luminous blue distance of a windy clear March day;

And at once the branches kindled with a light of hovering green,

And grew vital in the sunshine as the spirit passed between.

Birds flash'd about the copses, striking sharp notes through the air;

Danced the lambs within the meadows; crept the snake from out his lair;

Soft as shadow sprang the violets, thousands seeming but as one;

Flamed the crocuses beside them, like the droppings of the sun.

And the Goddess of the Spring, that Spirit tender and benign,

Squeezed a vapory cloud which vanish'd into heaven's crystal wine;

And she faded in the distance where the thickening leaves were piled,

And the New Year had grown older, and no longer was a child.

II.

Summer, shaking languid roses from his dewbe-dabbled hair,

Summer, in a robe of green, and with his arms and shoulders bare,

Next came forward; and the richness of his pageants filled the eye,

Breadths of English meadows basking underneath the happy sky.

Long grass swaying in the playing of the almost wearied breeze;

Flowers bow'd beneath a crowd of the yellowarmor'd bees;

Sumptuous forests fill'd with twilight, like a dreamy old romance,

Rivers falling, rivers calling, in their indolent advance;

Crimson heath-bells making regal all the solitary places,

Dominant light that pierces down into the deep blue water spaces;

Sun uprisings, and sun-settings, and intensities of noon;

Purple darkness of the midnight, and the glory of the moon.

Rapid rosy-tinted lightnings, where the rocky clouds are riven,

Like the lifting of a veil before the inner courts of heaven;

Silver stars in azure evenings slowly climbing up the steep,

Cornfields ripening to the harvest, and the wide seas smooth with sleep.

Circled with these living splendors, Summer pass'd from out my sight;

Like a dream that fill'd with beauty all the caverns of the night!

And the vision and the presence into empty nothing ran,

And the New Year was still older, and seem'd now a youthful man.

III.

Autumn! Forth from glowing orchards stepp'd he gaily in a gown

Of warm russet freaked with gold, and with a vision sunny brown;

On his head a rural chaplet, wreathed with heavily drooping grapes,

And broad shadow casting vine leaves like the Bacchanalian shapes.

Fruits and berries roll'd. before him from the year's exhausted horn,

Jets of wine went spinning upwards, and he held a sheaf of corn:

And he laugh'd for very joy, and he danced from too much pleasure,

And he sang old songs of harvest, and he quaff'd a mighty measure.

But above this wild delight an over-mastering graveness rose,

And the fields and trees seemed thoughtful in their absolute repose:

And I saw the woods consuming in a manycolored death,

Streaks of yellow flame, down deepening through the green that lingereth.

Sanguine flashes, like a sunset, and austerely shadowing brown:

And I heard, within the silence, the nuts sharply rattling down;

And I saw the long dark edges all alight with scarlet fire,

Where the berries, pulpy ripe, had spread their bird-feasts on the briar.

I beheld the southern vineyards, and the hopgrounds of our land,

Sending gusts of fragrance outwards, nearly to the salt sea strand;