"Welcome to the New Year"
by Eleanor Farjeon
Hey, my lad, ho, my lad!from All the Silver Pennies
Here’s a New Broom.
Heaven’s your housetop
And Earth is your room.
Tuck up your shirtsleeves,
There’s plenty to do-
Look at the muddle
That’s waiting for you!
Dust in the corners
And dirt on the floor,
Cobwebs still clinging
To window and door.
Hey, my lad! ho, my lad!
Nimble and keen -
Here’s your New Broom, my lad!
See you sweep clean.
edited by Blanch Jennings Thompson
"Fire and Ice"
by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,from the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
edited by Richard Ellmann and Robert O’Clair
Eleanor Farjeon an English author was a friend of Robert Frost whose summer home near Middlebury, Vermont was vandalized December 28, 2007. The Associated Press reported that many items were damaged or burned by vandals who apparently broke into the home for a drinking party. Frost summered at the home from 1939 until his death in 1963. Thankfully, the cabin located on the property where Frost wrote was not damaged.
The phrase “a new broom sweeps clean” was used quite frequently by my mother to encourage me to begin anew - appropriate for a new year. Farjeon’s poem certainly infers this. Frost’s words were somewhat prophetic. Hate almost destroyed his home on a cold winter’s night.
In my book . . . Our world needs a new broom.
