1815 AND 1860.

Sat beside the spent yule-log,
In its gray ashes lying;
Outside, in cold December’s arms,
The Old Year lay a-dying.
The spirits of the bye-gone years
Moved round him, to and fro;
And the young New Year stood bent to hear
The red cock’s midnight crow,
As the bells begin to ring him in
Merrily over the snow.

But never New Year, methought, did wear
Upon his baby-brow,
Less blithesome cheer then this New Year
That we have crowned e’en now.
His baby head is helmeted,
In his baby grasp a brand,
In his baby eye a mystery,
And a look of stern command:
And babe though he be, it is plain to see
He has man’s work on hand.

Proudly, but painfully, he stept
Up to the vacant throne,
Across the corpse of the dead Old Year
That lay uncrowned, and prone.
And to all the hosts of the past year’s ghosts
This haughty challenge threw:
“Your work ye have done, but never a one
Such work as I’ve to do;-
From the first of the eighteenhundreds
To him that I’m heir unto.”

When to answer his boast, forth stepped a ghost
Of diplomatic air;
His coat was broidered on all the seams,
His knee was gartered fair;
With stars and crosses and ribbons,
His breast it glittered sheen,
No order at all, so great or small,
But there its badge was seen;
Quoth he- “You see here, that famous year
Eighteen hundred and fifteen.

“ ‘Twas I that drew the protocols
Of Paris and Vienna;
Laid Europe’s best and bravest at rest
In Waterloo’s red Gehenna;
‘Twas I pulled down Napoleon;
And set the Bourbon high;
‘Twas I gave France her last war-dance,
And her supper of humble-pie;
‘Twas I that linked black eagles three
In a Holy Alliance tie.

“The map of Europe I recast
In the form it wears to-day;
Knocked frontiers about, dealt kingdoms out,
In a free-and-easy way.
I pooh-poohed national feelings,
I laughed at the claims of race:
What were they to escape my stout red-tape,
Or protest in my parchments’ face?
So I bade them be quiet, and diplomates’ fiat
I set up in their place.

“All this did I, with a hand so high,
That the pressure yet remains;
My mould I set on the world, and yet
That mould the world retains.
‘Tis true that of my protocols
Kings and Kaisers have cracked a few;
They have set up a new crown here and there,
And burked a republic or two,-
The Napoleons have turned up again,
And the Bourbons fallen through.

“But still I’m the year that all revere
As the ground of things that be;
Not a Kaiser or King his title can bring
To other founder than me,
And you dare come, you Hop-o’-my-Thumb,
To talk of your work,- pooh-pooh!
After all I have done, I should like to know
What there is left for you?”
Quoth young Sixty, serene, “You forget,- Fifteen;-
Your doings to undo!”

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