Let Sorrow shed her lonely tear,
Let Revelry hold her ladle;
Bring boughs of cypress for the biel.
Fling roses on the cradle;
Mates to wait on the funeral state!
Pages to pour the wine!
And a requiem for Twenty-eight,--
And a health to Twenty-nine.

Alas! for human happiness,
Alas! for human sorrow;
Our Yesterday is nothingness,
What else will be our Morrow?
Still Beauty must be stealing hearts,
And Knavery stealing purses;
Still Cooks must live by making tarts,
And Wits by making verses;
While Sages prate and Courts debate,
The same Stars set and shine;
And the World, as it roll'd through Twenty-eight,
Must roll through Twenty-nine.

Some King will come, in Heaven's good time,
To the tomb his Father came to;
Some Thief will wade through blood and crime
To a crown he has no claim to;
Some Suffering Land will rend in twain
The manacles that bound her,
And gather the links of the broken chain
To fasten them proudly round her;