A Burden

(By Mary Newmarch Prescott)[1]

What did you bring to us, Old Year?

Many a hope and many a fear?

Smiles a few, but many a tear?

Many a heartache for days together,

Many a taste of frosty weather?

Many a wish ungratified,

Many a happiness denied?

But you brought us, too, the rosy day,

Let its troubles be what they may:

The hollow night, whose planets climb

Pathways older, perhaps, than Time;

The sunset’s lingering, fading flush

And the twilight’s eloquent hush;

And baby moon, like a sweet surprise,

Leaning out of the western skies

You brought the dawn, with its balmy light

Woven out of the infinite;

The early anemone in the wood,

And all the delicate sisterhood;

The pink mayflower in its hiding places;

And the pale Linnaea’s tender graces;

The blood-root, with its crimson stain,

And the lonesome whippoorwill’s refrain.

Out of your treasure-house you brought

The season’s tapestries, inwrought

With wild and beautiful devices,

And fragrant with all fragrant spices;

The scarlet and god of the autumn leaf,

The corn in the ear, the wheat in the sheaf,

The witchery of the snow, that weaves

After the pattern of stars and leaves

And the light that never from land or sea

Borrowed half of its poetry.

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[1] In Early New England People, Sarah Titcomb writes: “Mary N. Prescott, while yet a schoolgirl, began writing for magazines….In the words of Mr. Woodman, in Poets’ Homes, ‘there is a rare depth and tenderness in her verse.’  Her love and faith and trust in God ‘well up like clear springs.’”