At the Entering of the New Year Thomas Hardy

I (OLD STYLE)

Our songs went up and out the chimney,
And roused the home-gone husbandmen;
Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,
Our hands-across and back again,
Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements
         On to the white highway,
Where nighted farers paused and muttered,
         “Keep it up well, do they!”

The contrabasso’s measured booming
Sped at each bar to the parish bounds,
To shepherds at their midnight lambings,
To stealthy poachers on their rounds;
And everybody caught full duly
         The notes of our delight,
As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise
         Hailed by our sanguine sight.

II (NEW STYLE)

         We stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb,
         As if to give ear to the muffled peal,
         Brought or withheld at the breeze’s whim;
         But our truest heed is to words that steal
         From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray,
         And seems, so far as our sense can see,
         To feature bereaved Humanity,
         As it sighs to the imminent year its say:-