From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 194-195.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
The earth has swung around the sun,
Another year has just begun.
With health and wealth and joy in store,
It comes, I hope, to bless you more
Than any years that’s gone before.
I wish you joy, but any chappy
Who thinks he’s here just to be happy
Has missed the reason for his living —
Life is not getting; life is giving.
Life is real, life is earnest,
Ere old Satan has us furnaced,
Let’s bulge in and do our derndest.
My middle years are slipping past,
I grow no younger very fast,
And though in bracing winter weather
I jump and crack my heels together,
The hair is falling from my knob,
And young folks call me Uncle Bob.
But though our backs with years be bent,
We’re not too old yet to repent.
This is a time of new beginnings,
Let’s quit our meanness and our sinnings.
The god who named this month for us,
[195]
Old Janus, was a two-faced cuss;
One face looked forward down the track,
The other mug kept looking back,
And so, the last day of December,
It does no harm if we remember
The bitter fruits of sin we’ve tasted,
The precious hours of life we’ve wasted,
And how, sometimes, our selfishness
Ignored a fellow man’s distress.
But when the New Year rises snappy
Let’s cut some capers and be happy,
Let’s dance a jig with mam and pappy.
This winter time has wrath and rigors,
Yet cleanses, strengthens, and envigors;
It makes us better men, by jiggers.
Our sins do easily beset us,
But we can shake them ere they get us.
We have few nobler institutions
Than this of New Year’s resolutions.