New Year's Eve

Once on the year's last eve in my mind's might

Sitting in dreams, not sad, nor quite elysian,

Balancing all 'twixt wonder and derision,

Methought my body and all this world took flight,

And vanished from me, as a dream, outright;

Leaning out thus in sudden strange decision,

I saw as it were in the flashing of a vision,

Far down between the tall towers of the night,

Borne by great winds in awful unison,

The teeming masses of mankind sweep by,

Even as a glittering river with deep sound

And innumerable banners, rolling on

Over the starry border glooms that bound

The last gray space in dim eternity.

And all that strange unearthly multitude

Seemed twisted in vast seething companies,

That evermore with hoarse and terrible cries

And desperate encounter at mad feud

Plunged onward, each in its implacable mood

Borne down over the trampled blazonries

Of other faiths and other phantasies,

Each following furiously, and each pursued;

So sped they on with tumult vast and grim,

But ever meseemed beyond them I could see

White-haloed groups that sought perpetually

The figure of one crowned and sacrificed;

And faint, far forward, floating tall and dim,

The banner of our Lord and Master, Christ.