Paul Pioneer.]
Good morning--good morning--a happy new year!
We greet you, kind friends of the old _Pioneer_;
Hope your coffee is good and your steak is well done,
And you're happy as clams in the sand and the sun.
The old year's a shadow--a shade of the past;
It is gone with its toils and its triumphs so vast--
With its joys and its tears--with its pleasure and pain--
With its shouts of the brave and its heaps of the slain--
Gone--and it cometh--no, never again.
And as we look forth on the future so fair
Let us brush from the picture the visage of care;
The error, the folly, the frown and the tear--
Drop them all at the grave of the silent old year.
Has the heart been oppressed with a burden of woe?
Has the spirit been cowed by a merciless blow?
Has the tongue of the brave or the voice of the fair
Prayed to God and received no response to its prayer?
Look up!--'twas a shadow--the morning is here:
A Happy New Year!--O, a Happy New Year!
Yet stay for a moment. We cannot forget
The fields where the true and the traitor have met;
When the old year came in we were trembling with fear
Lest Freedom should fall in her glorious career;
And the roar of the conflict was loud o'er the land
Where the traitor-flag waved in a rebel's red hand;
But the God of the Just led the hosts of the Free,
And Victory marched from the north to the sea.
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