The Year

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. ELLA WHEELER WILCOX was an American author and popular poet, known for her brand of optimistic, plainly written verses. Her work New Year: A Dialogue, written in 1909, unravels a charming dialogue between the “Mortal” and “The New Year”. Her autobiography The Worlds and I was published a year before her death. She died of cancer in 1919.