"New Year: A Dialogue: Poem" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Happy New Year! Happy 2022!

Today's blog is late for multiple reasons.

1) I slept in late.

2) I went for a walk with Rebekah to in advance of the winter storm.

3) I had multiple ideas and couldn't decide on one.

I have decided.

Today is New Year's Day but it's also Saturday, the day on the BryonySeries blog that's devoted to all things Irish - and that's because of Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara.

But as I gradually became friends with this former supervisor of mine over the last couple years, through his writing and publishing his first novel ever (and the first novel for the BryonySeries with an author other than me), I learned he is first a poet and not a novelist and that poetry is his first love.

So I chose a poem to honor today.

1) The poem is in the public domain.

2) The poem was written by an author whose work becomes very important to Sue Bass, the main character in my work in progress, Call of the Siren.

3) And the poem not only honors the new year but speaks to the heart of many as we leave 2021.

As I read these lines last night, I wondered about the difficulties in her life at the time she published it (1909), which preceded even the Spansih flu pandemic and World War I.

"New Year: A Dialogue: Poem" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

MORTAL:
"The night is cold, the hour is late, the world is bleak and drear;
Who is it knocking at my door?"

THE NEW YEAR:
"I am Good Cheer."

MORTAL:
"Your voice is strange; I know you not; in shadows dark I grope.
What seek you here?"

THE NEW YEAR:
"Friend, let me in; my name is Hope."

MORTAL:
"And mine is Failure; you but mock the life you seek to bless. Pass on."

THE NEW YEAR:
"Nay, open wide the door; I am Success."

MORTAL:
"But I am ill and spent with pain; too late has come your wealth. I cannot use it."

THE NEW YEAR:
"Listen, friend; I am Good Health."

MORTAL:
"Now, wide I fling my door. Come in, and your fair statements prove."

THE NEW YEAR:
"But you must open, too, your heart, for I am Love."