The Year

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?
The new year comes, the old year goes,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1910)