Online Poetry Box

View Original

The Year

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Happy New Year everyone! May your reflections on the year behind us be revelatory and your resolutions for the year ahead be full of hopeful anticipation.

The Year

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of the year.