Sunday, January 10, 2010

The Young New Year has come so soon

This poem by an unknown author comes from a Poetry Society anthology of verse especially suitable for speaking aloud – something which was so popular in my childhood that there were even competitions. I made my first public appearance at the age of six, reciting AA Milne’s Has Anybody Seen My Mouse?

It cannot really be that long ago, can it?


The New Year

The Young New Year has come so soon
I wonder where the Old Years go?
To some dim land behind the moon
Where starlight glimmers, pale & low.

And everything is grey & cold
And there they sit, these ancient years,
Their eyes so kind, & dim & old,
Their faces lined with vanished cares.

Their voices rattle, dry like bones,
The while they talk of what has been,
And murmur in their hollow tones
Of all the triumphs they have seen.

While the Young Year, with earnest eyes,
Comes buoyant on, to run his race,
Nor dreams how fast his life-span flies
Nor how his end draws on apace.

Anon