Читать книгу The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - Charles Lamb - Страница 183

Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star

Tells us, the day himself's not far;

And see where, breaking from the night,

He gilds the western hills with light.

With him old Janus doth appear,

Peeping into the future year,

With such a look as seems to say,

The prospect is not good that way.

Thus do we rise ill sights to see,

And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy;

When the prophetic fear of things

A more tormenting mischief brings,

More full of soul-tormenting gall,

Than direst mischiefs can befall.

But stay! but stay! methinks my sight,

Better inform'd by clearer light,

Discerns sereneness in that brow,

That all contracted seem'd but now.

His revers'd face may show distaste,

And frown upon the ills are past;

But that which this way looks is clear,

And smiles upon the New-born Year.

He looks too from a place so high,

The Year lies open to his eye;

And all the moments open are

To the exact discoverer.

Yet more and more he smiles upon

The happy revolution.

Why should we then suspect or fear

The influences of a year,

So smiles upon us the first morn,

And speaks us good so soon as born?

Plague on't! the last was ill enough,

This cannot but make better proof;

Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through

The last, why so we may this too;

And then the next in reason shou'd

Be superexcellently good:

For the worst ills (we daily see)

Have no more perpetuity,

Than the best fortunes that do fall;

Which also bring us wherewithal

Longer their being to support,

Than those do of the other sort:

And who has one good year in three,

And yet repines at destiny,

Appears ungrateful in the case,

And merits not the good he has.

Then let us welcome the New Guest

With lusty brimmers of the best;

Mirth always should Good Fortune meet,

And renders e'en Disaster sweet:

And though the Princess turn her back,

Let us but line ourselves with sack,

We better shall by far hold out,

Till the next Year she face about.

How say you, reader—do not these verses smack of the rough magnanimity of the old English vein? Do they not fortify like a cordial; enlarging the heart, and productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction? Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected?—Passed like a cloud—absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry—clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries—And now another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you all, my masters!