Scottish Poetry Selection
- Goodbye

The end of the old year has always been important in a country with long agrarian roots, where the seasons governed so much of life. But this poem by Walter Wingate is very different from some of the bachanalian songs and poems normally associated with a Scottish "Hogmanay".


Goodbye

Good bye, old year, good bye!
    We have been blithe together
And parting craves a sigh.
You have been long my guest
    In bright and cloudy weather
And how you travel west:
West is the sunset land
    Of dimness and forgetting.
A newer guest at hand.
To make your memory pale
    Will soon himself be setting
Where you have told your tale.
You come and you depart
    To chance and change inuring
The hostel of my heart.
And neither smile nor sigh
    Is ever long-enduring.
Good bye, old year, good bye.

Return to the Index of Walter Wingate Poems or the General Index of Scottish Poetry



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