Goodbye, strange year, so fierce and yet so tender—
So hot with battle and so blind with tears;
To-day is thine, to-night the Almighty Lender
Resumes thee back into the timeless years:
Goodbye!
Not in a waste of sheeted snow thou diest,
Nor ’mid tumultuous echoes of the deep;
Grey placid evening folds thee where thou liest,
And modest airs caress thee into sleep:
Goodbye!
How calm a death for such insatiate warrior!
But sternest souls and maddest in the fray
Oft, ere they float beyond life’s viewless barrier,
Reveal to love their chasten’d eyes, and say
Goodbye!
So, leave a blessing ere thou part for heaven;
Tell the fond earth she is not always thus;
Let some kind spirit with the morn be given,
And not to her alone, but ah, to us—
Goodbye!
To us, who long to go where thou art going,
To rise from self, and be for ever free;
To see the land with milk and honey flowing,
And say to memory, as we say to thee,
Goodbye!