Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself.  For what satisfaction hath a man, that he shall “lie down with kings and emperors in death,” who in his life-time never greatly coveted the society of such bed-fellows?—­or, forsooth, that “so shall the fairest face appear?”—­why, to comfort me, must Alice W——­n be a goblin?  More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones.  Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that “such as he now is, I must shortly be.”  Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest.  In the meantime I am alive.  I move about.  I am worth twenty of thee.  Know thy betters!  Thy New Years’ Days are past.  I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821.  Another cup of wine—­and while that turn-coat bell, that just now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton.—­

THE NEW YEAR

  Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star
  Tells us, the day himself’s not far;
  And see where, breaking from the night,
  He gilds the western hills with light. 
  With him old Janus doth appear,
  Peeping into the future year,
  With such a look as seems to say,
  The prospect is not good that way. 
  Thus do we rise ill sights to see,
  And ’gainst ourselves to prophesy;
  When the prophetic fear of things
  A more tormenting mischief brings,
  More full of soul-tormenting gall,
  Than direst mischiefs can befall. 
  But stay! but stay! methinks my sight,
  Better inform’d by clearer light,
  Discerns sereneness in that brow,
  That all contracted seem’d but now. 
  His revers’d face may show distaste,
  And frown upon the ills are past;
  But that which this way looks is clear,
  And smiles upon the New-born Year. 
  He looks too from a place so high,
  The Year lies open to his eye;
  And all the moments open are
  To the exact discoverer. 
  Yet more and more he smiles upon
  The happy revolution. 
  Why should we then suspect or fear
  The influences of a year,
  So smiles upon us the first morn,
  And speaks us good so soon as born? 
  Plague on’t! the last was ill enough,
  This cannot but make better proof;
  Or, at the worst, as we brush’d through
  The last, why so we may this too;
  And then the next in reason shou’d
  Be superexcellently good: 
  For the worst ills (we daily see)
  Have no more perpetuity,
  Than the best fortunes that do fall;
  Which also bring us wherewithal
  Longer their being to support,
  Than those do of the other sort: 
  And who has one good year in three,