The Death Of The Old Year: New Zealand.

On the day the Old Year died, wild was the weeping
Among the widowed months that shared his pyre.
Fast over the world the tempestuous wind came, sweeping
In a stole of leaves to light the funeral fire.
Alas, the sad tears and mourning general,
And the last small, wave to months they loved full well,
Lying like Indian widows in trappings dark and funeral,
Watching the heaving bosom of their passing-bell.
Oh, how their rosaries (linked to withered leaves)
Were told with soft and melancholy breath;
Time beats his bosom and all Mankind grieves
To see the lost months share their great lord's death.
Come now, wild wind, thou chief priest of the year,
Scatter the holy water on their eyes;
Chant wintry Latin low across each bier,
While those who watch observe how each month dies.
January, somewhat tired from stooping low
To rake the Christmas litter left behind,
Dies all unfriended. No one seems to know
Her age or rank—and no one seems to mind!
February lies weighed down with flails and books—
The thresher's mistress and the schoolboys' bane—
She clasps the grizzled wheat and sadly looks
Northward for the dark delivering rain.
And there lies March, with hat and wig awry,
Spinning beneath the easterly's rough hand.
Her mantle flogs the flames. The brown leaves fly
And the migrant birds wheel sharply from the land.
Poor April dies with scarce a sound of woe,
Shaking her bells in vain for passing showers,
And goes the way that bells and jesters go;
While May above her groans beneath scorched flowers.
Cold June, that loved the baked meats and the fire,
Finds both upon her own fast smouldering frame;
While long July, that freezes every shire
Wishes the shires would do to her the same.
Blind August that has never seen the Spring
But knows its beauty, dies with busy hands,
Making green leaves, and teaching larks to sing
For one that's dying, too. October stands
Bellows in hand, intent on Summer's flames,
And (half-bewildered by her nearing end)
November, the most passionate of dames,
Kisses and dies. The ripened fruits attend
With bursting hearts to each imperial ember
That lies in silence on the leafy bier;
And with the swift expiring of December,
Up … like a Phoenix, leaps the brave New Year.

—Eve Langley.