Robert Henri, “Snow in New York” (1902)
New Year’s Day
Here’s a wonderful poem by Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) to usher in 2016. Jackson begins by imagining the Old Year looking to the New Year with hope, but these hopes do not come with any real desire to change. “The Old Year’s heart was full of greed,” we are told, and what it wants from the New Year sounds suspiciously like more of the same: “But to the New Year’s generous hand/All gifts in plenty shall return.”
In fact, Old Year sounds like an addict making promises. We’ll learn from our failures and finally understand true love? We’ll finally be “quiet and calm and pure of life”? Riight.
We know from the first that the resolutions we make on January 1 we will break on January 2. That’s why, in the short second stanza, Jackson mocks the idea that everything can change in the course of one miraculous night.
The final stanza presents us with a surprising twist, however. Why not see every night as December 31? If we have the idea that miracles can occur as one year passes into the next, why not devote all evenings to “confession and resolve and prayer” and regard all mornings as “sacred days to wake new gladness in the sunny air”?
Honor the “healing balm of sleep” and live as though every day is a new year. Or as Jackson puts it, “Each sunrise sees a new year born.” That is the key to genuine transformation.
Happy New Year.
New Year’s Morning
By Helen Hunt Jackson
Only a night from old to new!
Only a night, and so much wrought!
The Old Year’s heart all weary grew,
But said: “The New Year rest has brought.”
The Old Year’s hopes its heart laid down,
As in a grave; but trusting, said:
“The blossoms of the New Year’s crown
Bloom from the ashes of the dead.”
The Old Year’s heart was full of greed;
With selfishness it longed and ached,
And cried: “I have not half I need.
My thirst is bitter and unslaked.
But to the New Year’s generous hand
All gifts in plenty shall return;
True love it shall understand;
By all my failures it shall learn.
I have been reckless; it shall be
Quiet and calm and pure of life.
I was a slave; it shall go free,
And find sweet peace where I leave strife.”
Only a night from old to new!
Never a night such changes brought.
The Old Year had its work to do;
No New Year miracles are wrought.
Always a night from old to new!
Night and the healing balm of sleep!
Each morn is New Year’s morn come true,
Morn of a festival to keep.
All nights are sacred nights to make
Confession and resolve and prayer;
All days are sacred days to wake
New gladness in the sunny air.
Only a night from old to new;
Only a sleep from night to morn.
The new is but the old come true;
Each sunrise sees a new year born.
