Henry Timrod
Art thou not glad to close
Thy wearied eyes, O saddest child of Time,
Eyes which have looked on every mortal crime,
And swept the piteous round of mortal woes?
In dark Plutonian caves,
Beneath the lowest deep, go, hide thy head;
Or earth thee where the blood that thou hast shed
May trickle on thee from thy countless graves!
Take with thee all thy gloom
And guilt, and all our griefs, save what the breast,
Without a wrong to some dear shadowy guest,
May not surrender even to the tomb.
No tear shall weep thy fall,
When, as the midnight bell doth toll thy fate,
Another lifts the sceptre of thy state,
And sits a monarch in thine ancient hall.
HIM all the hours attend,
With a new hope like morning in their eyes;
Him the fair earth and him these radiant skies
Hail as their sovereign, welcome as their friend.
Him, too, the nations wait;
“O lead us from the shadow of the Past,”
In a long wail like this December blast,
They cry, and, crying, grow less desolate.
How he will shape his sway
They ask not–for old doubts and fears will cling–
And yet they trust that, somehow, he will bring
A sweeter sunshine than thy mildest day.
Beneath his gentle hand
They hope to see no meadow, vale, or hill
Stained with a deeper red than roses spill,
When some too boisterous zephyr sweeps the land.
A time of peaceful prayer,
Of law, love, labor, honest loss and gain–
These are the visions of the coming reign
Now floating to them on this wintry air.
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Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem feels like a funeral speech for a year that has finally worn itself out. The voice speaks directly to “the saddest child of Time,” as if the old year were a living thing, one that has seen too much and done too much harm. The tone is tired but not bitter. There’s relief in it, the kind that comes after a long illness, when even grief begins to feel like rest.
The poet treats the passing year as both a witness and a culprit — a being whose “eyes… have looked on every mortal crime.” The language points to exhaustion, not just of time but of spirit. The suggestion is that the year has carried every sorrow of the human world, and now it’s time for it to go underground, literally — “hide thy head” in “dark Plutonian caves.” That image sets the tone for the whole piece: the end of something that cannot be redeemed, something that needs to disappear into the earth.
At the same time, the poem makes a clear separation between the grief we can let go of and the grief we can’t. “Take with thee all thy gloom,” the poet says, but adds that some sorrow “the breast… may not surrender even to the tomb.” It’s a small but important turn. The past year can die, but not everything in it can be buried. There’s an honesty here that keeps the poem from feeling too hopeful too quickly.
When the new year enters, the tone shifts from elegy to quiet anticipation. The poem doesn’t promise anything grand, just a gentler world. The people who greet this new monarch do not ask “how he will shape his sway” — they simply trust that it will be better. It’s a cautious hope, aware that doubt still lingers, that memory still hurts. Yet the idea of renewal feels earned. After the long list of crimes and blood and sorrow, even a faint hope counts as light.
The closing image — that no field shall be “stained with a deeper red than roses spill” — captures that hope without denying the violence that came before. It’s one of the few touches of color in the poem, and it stands out because of its restraint. The poet doesn’t imagine paradise, only peace.
As a war poem, this piece operates on two levels. On the surface, it’s about the turn of the year, a ritual of ending and beginning. But beneath that, it reads as a reflection on war’s exhaustion — a call to bury the violence of one era and trust, even blindly, that the next will not repeat it. The poem avoids speeches or slogans. Its strength lies in its weariness. It understands that after so much loss, people don’t want triumph — they want quiet, lawful work, “honest loss and gain.”
It’s a poem about recovery that hasn’t happened yet. The war has left its mark, and the earth itself feels guilty. But the tone never breaks into despair. Instead, it settles into a kind of calm watchfulness, as if to say that time itself, not armies or kings, must heal what men have done.