NEW
YEAR’S EVE
Once on the
year’s last eve in my mind’s might
Sitting in dreams, not sad,
nor quite elysian,
Balancing all ’twixt wonder
and derision,
Methought my body and all this world took flight,
And vanished from me, as a dream, outright;
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Leaning out thus in sudden strange
decision,
I saw as it were in the flashing
of a vision,
Far down between the tall towers of the night,
Borne by great winds in awful
unison,
The
teeming masses of mankind sweep by,
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Even
as a glittering river with deep sound
And innumerable banners, rolling on
Over the starry border glooms
that bound
The
last gray space in dim eternity.
And all that
strange unearthly multitude
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Seemed twisted in vast seething
companies,
That evermore with hoarse and
terrible cries
And desperate encounter at mad feud
Plunged onward, each in its implacable mood
Borne down over the trampled
blazonries
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Of other faiths and other phantasies,
Each falling furiously, and each pursued;
So sped they on with tumult
vast and grim,
But
ever meseemed beyond them I could see
White-haloed
groups that sought perpetually
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The
figure of one crowned and sacrificed;
And faint, far forward, floating
tall and dim,
The
banner of our Lord and Master, Christ.
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