Versedays: New Year's Eve by Charles Lamb

Image Credit: eou

Ah, I can't believe it. This is our last Versedays for this year! This year went by fast and slow at the same time for me. At times it would seem as if time was flying and at others it was unbearably sluggish. All in all a year of mixed feelings, full of moments of happiness, a touch of worry, some celebrations, a bit of sadness, little nostalgia and lots of smiles. Every year is so different.

So is every Verseday, in it's own way. So for our last poem post this year, I decided to post quotes from an essay called New Year's Eve by Charles Lamb. I had this when I was studying as an undergraduate and I remember my teacher telling that though it seems like a sad essay it's not. It ends on a note of optimism. It felt good to revisit it after so many years and here I post some of my favorite passages from the essay. What's more, Lamb also wrote a short poem within the essay, a part of which I have posted. Hope you like the selections.

Here's wishing all our readers an excellent year ahead, filled with joy, love and laughter. Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve by Charles Lamb

Every man hath two birth-days: two days, at least, in every year…


No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.


I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like miser's farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a weaver's shuttle."


I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave.


Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself--do these things go out with life?


Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters!


Then let us welcome the New Guest
With lusty brimmers of the best;
Mirth always should Good Fortune meet,
And renders e'en Disaster sweet:
And though the Princess turn her back,
Let us but line ourselves with sack,
We better shall by far hold out,
Till the next Year she face about.


And now another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you all, my masters!