The Child Year

I     "Dying of hunger and sorrow:     I die for my youth I fear!"     Murmured the midnight-haunting     Voice of the stricken Year.     There like a child it perished     In the stormy thoroughfare:     The snow with cruel whiteness     Had aged its flowing hair.     Ah, little Year so fruitful,     Ah, child that brought us bliss,     Must we so early lose you -     Our dear hopes end in this?     II     "Too young am I, too tender,     To bear earth's avalanche     Of wrong, that grinds down life-hope,     And makes my heart's-blood blanch.     "Tell him who soon shall follow     Where my tired feet have bled,     He must be older, shrewder,     Hard, cold, and selfish-bred -     "Or else like me be trampled     Under the harsh world's heel.     'Tis weakness to be youthful;     'Tis death to love and feel."     III     Then saw I how the New Year     Came like a scheming man,     With icy eyes, his forehead     Wrinkled by care and plan     For trade and rule and profit.     To him the fading child     Looked up and cried, "Oh, brother!"     But died even while it smiled.     Down bent the harsh new-comer     To lift with loving arm     The wanderer mute and fallen;     And lo! his eyes were warm;     All changed he grew; the wrinkles     Vanished: he, too, looked young -     As if that lost child's spirit     Into his breast had sprung.     So are those lives not wasted,     Too frail to bear the fray.     So Years may die, yet leave us     Young hearts in a world grown gray.