On New Year’s Eve, Robert Burns’ poem ‘Auld Lang Syne’ has become a traditional recitation to welcome in the New Year. Less noted but just as noteworthy is the poem “New Year’s Eve” by Mathilde Blind.

New Year's Eve

Another full-orbed year hath waned to-day,
And set in the irrevocable past,
And headlong whirled long Time's winged blast
My fluttering rose of youth is borne away:
Ah rose once crimson with the blood of May,
A honeyed haunt where bees would break their fast,
I watch thy scattering petals flee aghast,
And all the flickering rose-lights turning grey.

Poor fool of life! plagued ever with thy vain
Regrets and futile longings! were the years
Not cups o'erbrimming still with gall and tears?
Let go thy puny personal joy and pain!
If youth with all its brief hope disappears,
To deathless hope we must be born again.
Mathilde Blind


Mathilde Blind was a late-Victorian era poet. Much more than that, she was a headstrong young woman involved in radical politics and women’s movements in Germany. Her father passed away when she was young. Her mother remarried Karl Blind- a well noted political writer who was imprisoned for his involvement in the Baden Insurrection in 1848. Growing up, she had the opportunity to be around many figures heavily involved in political movements, Karl Marx being one of them. Her early influences created a lasting mark on ideas about government, the world, and herself. So headstrong she became, she was expelled from school in her teens due to being openly atheistic. She was determined, however, to continue to educate herself, placing her thoughts and ideas into her writings. These thoughts can be found in the following books contining her poetry: The Prophecy of St. Oran, The Heather on Fire, Songs and Sonnets, and Birds of Passage.

In her poem, “New Year’s Eve” , Mathilde reflects back at how quickly a full year has come and gone and how quickly life itself seems to slip past us. She compared it to a rose blossoming, in full bloom, losing petals, and then finally crumbling away.

In the light of the fleeing time, she reminds us what fools humans are to worry about things that can’t be changed; regrets, longings, vanity. The year has enough bitterness and sadness in itself without adding our own. Youth is fleeting and all of the things we seem to chase after are gone as quickly as a rose.

While life can be full of bitterness and sadness, longings and worry, she leaves us with the reminder- “To deathless hope we must be born again.”
Hope itself never dies. Hope is always there, but we must choose it.

With the coming of the New Year, the old year has passed away with all of its worries and cares. The new year is here and along with it a chance for a fresh beginning and with it, hope. Hope for a better year, for resolutions to be met, relationships formed and healed, and for dreams to be turned into reality.

This year, remember, no matter what each day brings, hope never dies. May each of you have a blessed New Year!

Angela