A New Year's Midnight Reflection. By a Lady.

And has this year effac’d one single Crime?

Or rather has it not the Score encreas’d?

And laid up stores of Grief for future Years?

For future years! – oh bless’d presumptious thought!

When not a day, when not a moment’s ours!

On this point only – this important NOW,

(Strange awfull thought!) Eternity depends!

And yet this precious moment, man’s sole treasure,

This only stake for Everlasting Bliss,

Is given to dust, to painted toys, to wind,

And Wisdom sueing for her rightfull claim,

Has the poor pittance of a courtier’s pay,

An airy promise, and a faint resolve;

Both broke as soon as made – while Folly shouts,

And Claps her wings at this her famous triumph.

And shall this year like those already fled,

Be fool’d away in vanity and song?

No. Let me now indeed begin to live.

Let me press forward in the glorious chace,

That leads to life, that leads to joys eternal.

Tho’ earth and hell combine t’ obstruct my passage,

My God will arm me with his conqu’ring power,

And crown the vict’ry with an endless triumph.

Turn then my Soul from earth and all its wiles,

Keep thine eye fixt on thy celestial home,

Contemplate the Delights the blest enjoy,

Delights full beaming from the throne of God!

Without cessation and without allay

To last for ever! –

Here I must pause, and leave to Angel tongues

The vast Remainder! human thought amaz’d,

Shrinks at the wide unfathomable deep.

Shrinks but soon rises and exulting views

The endless transports Heav’n reserves for man.

Who would not to secure those Seas of Bliss,

Content, endure whole Ages of despair?

But Heav’n requires not such an arduous task,

It mingles Sweets in every bitter draught,

And strews the thorny path with fragrant flow’rs.

Short is the journey, and the end is Bliss.

Text: STE 3/17/3 (fair copy in the hand of Philip Furneaux); another version of the poem can be found in the bound volume of Hannah Wakeford’s meditations, poems, and other writings in STE 10/1, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford; see also Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 4, p. 111-12. Furneaux titled the above poem ‘On a Birth Day. By a Lady’, the same title as in STE 10/1. Anne Steele, in her response to Furneaux, corrected him, noting that it was written to commemorate the end of the year, not a birthday. Apparently, Steele had seen the poems previously through her sister, Mary Wakeford.