New Year's Eve, Midnight, by Federica Richardson McDonald, read for LibraVarkstartorg by Kristen Hughes. Dead, the dead year is lying at my feet. In this strange hour of the past and future-meat, there is no present, no land in the vast sea. Appalled, I stand here in eternity.
Darkness upon me, on my soul it weighs, the gloom that has crushed out of the life of days that once new light has crept into my heart. I have not strengthened to be the thancest part. Oh, what is time, and what is life, the fire that thrills my pulses with its large desire? Since at each step I render fragment of my soul, and growth means dying, with or is the goal.
The old, old question. Yet I do not shrink from bitter truths. I do not fear to drink, even to the dregs the cup that tears may fill. I'd know God's truth, though it were human ill.
I have cast down the idols in my mind which sought to comfort me for being blind. I need no pleasant lie to cheat the night. I need God's truth, that I may walk a right. That and that only, with unflinching eyes I would tear through the secret of the skies.
Smile on ye stars, in me there is a might which dares to scale your large imperial height. Yet, yet how shall it be? Time sweeps me on, and what one day I hold, the next is gone. The very heavens are changed, the face they were a moment back is lost to come no more.
My soul along the restless current drifts, and to its sight the source of radiance shifts, sadly I strive some gleam of truth to save, and cry God help me, battling with the wave. God help me? Well, I know the prayer is vain, although it rush up to my lips again. I know his help was given with the breath that led me thus to struggle against death.
No further help, no help beyond the soul, the fragment of himself I hold in my control. From heaven no stronger aid to lead me through the fight, in heaven no higher aim to bind me to the right. Thus stand I on the brink of this new year. Witness upon me, not to the work of fear.
Powerless I know to check the river's sweep. Powerful alone, my own soul's truth to keep. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain.