This week’s poem is “The Year” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox and it marks the end of another year and the beginning of a new one.
The new years come, the old years go,
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850—1919)
We know we dream, we dream we know.
Poem 301. The Year
What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year.
This poem seems to capture the essence of a year’s passing in just a few lines.
Wilcox begins with a rhetorical question—isn’t a poem about the New Year a bit clichéd? Nevertheless, she goes on and shows us the endless procession of new years replacing old years. Then there’s an intriguing line: “We know we dream, we dream we know” which seems to say that although we’re aware that we dream when we’re asleep, that knowledge is itself the product of a dream. This reminded me of the aphorism associated with the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi:
Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.
Zhuangzi
The next couplet seems to contrast the joy and fervour we feel at daybreak with our wistfulness at dusk, but it could also suggest the joy we feel when our mood is positive and the negative feelings associated with depression, whatever the time of day.
The fourth couplet shows human fickleness—the way we obsessively grasp at a thing we desire until we are surprised and hurt by some sharp unsuspected edge upon which we cast it aside and wish for some magical escape.
The fifth couplet summarises the gamut of human existence through the familiar steps of life: birth, affection, courting, marriage and death. “We wreathe our brides” hints at the flowers that surround a wedding, but also perhaps the veil that conceals the bride’s features. The phrase “we sheet our dead” refers to the shroud or winding sheet in which the dead are traditionally wrapped before burial.
The last couplet concisely expresses the emotions that we feel throughout the year: laughter, sorrow, hopes and fears.
I like it because it concisely sums up the range of emotions that we feel and the events that we experience throughout a year.
Links
- Read a deeper analysis of the poem at poemanalysis.com.
- Watch Galina Keencat’s performance on YouTube.