bread!
His very soul I'll hold in fee
For baubles that shall buy the hand
Of the coldest woman in the land!"

Spirit sore,
The Old Year cared to see no more;
While, as he turned, he heard a moan--
Frosty and keen was the wintry night--
Prone on the marble paving-stone,
Unwatched, unwept, a piteous sight,
Starved and dying a poor wretch lay;
Through the blast he heard him gasping say:

"O, Old Year!
From sightless eyes you force this tear;
Sorrows you've heaped upon my head,
Losses you've gathered to drive me wild,
All that I lived for, loved, are dead,--
Brother and sister, wife and child,
I, too, am perishing as well;
I shall share the toll of your passing bell!"

Grieved, and sad,
For the sins and woes the Human had,
The Old Year strove to avert his eyes;
But fly or turn wherever he would,
On his vexed ear smote the mingled cries
Of revel and new-made widowhood--
Of grief that would not be comforted
With the loved and beautiful lying dead.

Evermore, every hour,
Rising from hovel, hall and tower,
Swelling the strain of discontent;
Gurgled the hopeless prayer for alms,
Rung out the wild oath impotent;
Echoed by some brief walls of calms,
Straining the listener's shrinking ears,
Like silence when thunderbolts are near.

Across that calm, like gales of balm,
Some low, sweet household voices came;
Thrilling, like flute-notes straying out
From land to sea, some stormy night,
The ear that listens for the shout
Of drowning boatmen lost to sight--
And died away, again so soon
The pulseless air seemed fallen in a swoon.

Once pure and clear,
Clarion strains fell on his ear:
The preacher shook the soulless creeds,
And pierced men's hearts with arrowy words,
Yet failed to stir them to good deeds:
Their new-fledged thoughts, like July birds,
Soared on the air and glanced away,
Before the eloquent voice could stay.

"'Tis very sad the man is mad,"
The men and women gaily said;
As they, laughing, thread their homeward road,
Talking of other holidays;
Of last year, how it rained or snowed;
Who went abroad, who wed a blaze
Of diamonds with his shoddy bride,
On certain d