Helen Hunt Jackson's "New Year's Morning"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Arts, Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

Happy New Year (and Happy Reading) from The Daily Poem!

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to academic Calvinist parents, poet, author, and Native American rights activist Helen Hunt Jackson (born Helen Maria Fiske) was orphaned as a child and raised by her aunt. Jackson was sent to private schools and formed a lasting childhood friendship with Emily Dickinson. At the age of 21, Jackson married Lieutenant Edward Bissell Hunt and together they had two sons. Jackson began writing poetry only after the early deaths of her husband and both sons.

Jackson published five collections of poetry, including Verses (1870) and Easter Bells (1884), as well as children’s literature and travel books, often using the pseudonyms “H.H.,” “Rip van Winkle,” or “Saxe Holm.” Frequently in poor health, she moved to Colorado on her physician’s recommendation and married William Sharpless Jackson there in 1875.

Moved by an 1879 speech given by Chief Standing Bear, Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor (1881), an exposé of the rampant crimes against Native Americans, which led to the founding of the Indian Rights Association. In 1884 she published Ramona, a fictionalized account of the plight of Southern California’s dispossessed Mission Indians, inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.Jackson was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 1985.

-bio via Poetry Foundation

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, January 1st, 2025. Happy New Year to you and yours. I hope you've gotten a chance to take a cup of kindness for all Langsine and toasts out the old year and toast in the new.
0:23.3	Today's poem can certainly help with that.
0:26.8	It's by Helen Hunt Jackson, and it's called New Year's Morning.
0:31.7	Jackson, who was born 1830, died 1885, grew up in Massachusetts and then moved out west, living much of her later
0:41.5	life in Colorado and Southern California, where she became a profoundly interested activist
0:49.0	on behalf of the Native American people, writing about the various mistreatments of those people in her
0:55.3	nonfiction work, a century of dishonor, and then her, at the time, acclaimed novel, Ramona.
1:02.0	But she also found time to dabble in poetry, more than dabble, really. Her poems were read
1:09.9	and appreciated by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
1:12.0	and she rubbed elbows with and even encouraged the publication, the rare publication of work,
1:18.6	by poets such as Emily Dickinson. This poem has one of my favorite kinds of poetic twists,
1:26.0	and so though it's a little on the long side, I'll read it
1:28.4	twice. Here is New Year's Morning by Helen Hunt Jackson. Only a night from old to new, only a night,
1:39.8	and so much rot, the old year's heart all weary grew, but said the New Year rest has brought.
1:47.2	The old year's hopes its heart laid down, as in a grave, but trusting said, the blossoms of the
1:53.6	New Year's crown bloom from the ashes of the dead. The old year's heart was full of greed,
2:00.2	with selfishness it longed and ached and cried.
2:03.9	I have not half I need,
2:06.0	My thirst is bitter and unslaked,
2:08.8	But to the New Year's generous hand,
2:10.9	All gifts in plenty shall return.
2:13.6	True love it shall understand.
	...

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