Put Back Those Whiskers, I Know You
Ogden Nash

There is one fault that I must find with the twentieth century,
And I'll put it in a couple of words: Too adventury.
What I'd like would be some nice dull monotony
If anyone's gotony.
People have gone on for years looking forward hopefully to the
     beginning of every fresh anno Domini,
Full of more hopes than there are grits in hominy,
Because it is their guess that the Old Year has been so bad that
     the New Year cannot help being an improvement, and may I
     say that they would never make a living as guessers,
Because what happens, why the New Year simply combines and
     elaborates on the worst features of its predecessors.
Well, I know what the matter is, it stands out as clear as a
     chord in a symphony of Sibelius's,
The matter is that our recent New Years haven't been New Years
     at all, they have just been the same Old Year, probably
     1914 or something, under a lot of different aliases.
In my eagerness to encounter a New Year I stand ahead of most,
But only if it's a true New Year, not if it's merely the same Old Year
     with its beard shaved off and wearing a diaper labeled New Year
     just to get on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post,
Because there are few spectacles less convincing or more untidy
Than 1914 or something in a didy.
I am in favor of honesty as well as gluttony,
And I don't want a second-hand or repossessed January first any
     more than I want my spring lamb leathery and muttony.
Well anyhow, come on New Year, I may not be able to paint as
     capably as Rembrandt or Dali or El Greco,
But if you are a true New Year I can shout Happy True
     New Year everybody! quicker than Little Sir Echo.