(_For the Mirror_.)
It was but yesterday the snow
Of thy dead sire was on the hill--
It was but yesterday the flow
Of thy spring showers increased the rill,
And made a thousand blossoms swell
To welcome summer's festival.....
And now all these are of the past,
For this lone hour must be thy last!
Thou must depart! where none may know--
The sun for thee hath ever set,
The star of morn, the silver bow,
No more shall gem thy coronet
And give thee glory; but the sky
Shall shine on thy posterity!...
So there's an end of 1828; "all its great and glorious transactions
are now nothing more than mere matter of history!" What wars of arms
and words! what lots of changes and secessions! what debates on
"guarantee," "stipulations," and "untoward" events! what "piles of
legislation!" what a fund of speculation for the denizens of the
stock-exchange, and newspaper press!--all may now be embodied in that
little word--the _past_; and only serve to fill up and figure in the
pages of the next "Annual Register!"--sic transit gloria--"but the
proverb is somewhat musty." One, two, three.... ten, eleven, twelve,
and now "methinks my soul hath elbow room."
Those versed in the lore of Francis Moore, physician, which must
doubtless include most of our readers, are aware that our veteran
friend, eighteen hundred and twenty-eight, has been for some time in
what is called a "galloping" consumption, and it is certain cannot
possibly survive after the bells "chime twelve" on Wednesday night,
the thirty-first of December,--
"--as if an angel spoke,
I hear the solemn sound,"
when he will depart this life, and be gathered to his ancestors, who
have successively been entombed in the vault of Time.
Well, taking all things into consideration, we predict he will not
have many mourners in his train. "Rumours of wars" have gone through
the land, and the ominous hieroglyphics of "Raphael" in his "Prophetic
Messenger," unfold to the lover of futurity, that "war with all its
bloody train," will visit this quarter of the globe with unusual
severity the coming year--and we have had comets and "rumours" of
comets for many months past, while the red and glaring appearance of
the planet, Mars, is as we have elsewhere observed, considered by the
many a forerunner, and sign of long wars and much bloodshed. To dwell
further on the political horizon, or the "events and fortunes" of the
past year would be out of place in the fair pages of the MIRROR; and
should it be our fate to present its readers with future "notings" on
another year, we will then dwell upon the good or ill-fortune of Turk
or Russian to the _quantum suff_. of the most inveterate politician.
"Enough of this:" 1828 has nearly got the "go-by" and we have outlived
its pains and perils, its varied scenes of good or evil, and its
pleasures too, for there is a bright side to human reverse and
suffering, and we are ready at our posts to enact and stand another
campaign in this "strange eventful history." We often find that the
public discover virtues and good qualities in a man after his death,
which they had previously given him no credit for; let this be as it
may, 1828 may be deemed a very "passable" year. To use a simile, a
sick man when recovering from a fever, makes slow progress at first;
and we should fairly hope that the gallant ship is at last weathering
the hurricane of the "commercial crisis," and that the trade-winds of
prosperity will again visit us and extend their balmy influence over
our shores; and to borrow a commercial phrase, we trust to be able to
quote an improvement on this head next year.
I stood between the meeting years
The coming and the past,
And I ask'd of the future one
Wilt thou be like the last?
The same in many a sleepless night,
In many an anxious day?
Thank heaven! I have no prophet's eye,
To look upon thy way!