Poems, by Uriah Smith
The New Year, 1871
Why hail we thus each new-born year,
With voice of joy and scenes of mirth?
What room for gay and festive cheer,
While woe and darkness span the earth?
While sin and suffering, pain and death, still throw,
Their baleful shadow over all below?
POUS 143.5
Earth trembles at the cannon’s roar,
War’s murderous visage scours the plain;
Its fairest spots are drenched with gore,
Its fruitful fields are piled with slain.
And what are all these slow-revolving years,
But funeral pageants of distress and tears?
POUS 144.1
Contagions spread their wings of pall,
Fierce tempests rage with blasting breath,
And earthquake throes, engulfing all,
Make short and sure the way to death.
No peace, no safety, no enduring cheer,
To him who builds his hopes and treasures here.
POUS 144.2
Yet glad we hail each New Year’s morn;
For from the great high throne of Heaven
A royal fiat forth has gone,
A glorious word to earth is given:
Behold, says He who looks creation through,
Where sin has marred my works, I make anew.
POUS 144.3
New earth to smile before his face,
New heavens in crystal beauty dressed,
New years to run a guiltless race,
New joys for each immortal breast,
New flowers upspringing from the sinless sod,
New waters sparkling from the throne of God.
POUS 144.4
New bodies for these feeble forms,
New life from e’en the moldering tomb,
New skies unrent by raging storms,
New beauty, new unfading bloom,
New scenes the eternal era to begin,
Of peace for war, of righteousness for sin.
POUS 144.5
Speed then away, O tardy years!
Fly quickly, hours that intervene!
Groaning we wait the time when tears
Shall be but things that once have been.
Dawn, thou blest morn, so long in promise given,
The glorious glad New Year of God and Heaven.
POUS 145.1