C. THE CLOSING YEAR. (355)

George Denison Prentice, 1802-1870, widely known as a political writer, a poet, and a wit, was born in Preston, Connecticut, and graduated at Brown University in 1823.  He studied law, but never practiced his profession.  He edited a paper in Hartford for two years; and, in 1831, he became editor of the “Louisville Journal,” which position he held for nearly forty years.  As an editor, Mr. Prentice was an able, and sometimes bitter, political partisan, abounding in wit and satire; as a poet, he not only wrote gracefully himself, but he did much by his kindness and sympathy to develop the poetical talents of others.  Some who have since taken high rank, first became known to the world through the columns of the “Louisville Journal.” ###

’T is midnight’s holy hour, and silence now
Is brooding like a gentle spirit o’er
The still and pulseless world.  Hark! on the winds,
The bell’s deep notes are swelling; ’t is the knell
Of the departed year.

No funeral train
Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred
As by a mourner’s sigh; and, on yon cloud,
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the Seasons seem to stand—­
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn’s solemn form,
And Winter, with his aged locks—­and breathe
In mournful cadences, that come abroad
Like the far wind harp’s wild and touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o’er the dead year,
Gone from the earth forever.

’Tis a time
For memory and for tears.  Within the deep,
Still chambers of the heart, a specter dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time,
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions, that have passed away,
And left no shadow of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life.  That specter lifts
The coffin lid of Hope, and Joy, and Love,
And, bending mournfully above the pale,
Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers
O’er what has passed to nothingness.

The year
Has gone, and, with it, many a glorious throng
Of happy dreams.  Its mark is on each brow,
Its shadow in each heart.  In its swift course
It waved its scepter o’er the beautiful,
And they are not.  It laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man; and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim. 
It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous; and the tearful wail
Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded.  It passed o’er
The battle plain, where sword, and spear, and shield
Flashed in the light of midday; and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and moldering skeleton.  It came,
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air,
It heralded its millions to their home
In the dim land of dreams.