Comes now a smiling New-Born Year To fill to-day with goodly cheer— An infant hale and lusty. Upon our door-sill he is left By Daddy Time, of clothes bereft Despite the season gusty. If he be Churl or doughty Knight, A Son of Darkness or of Light No man can tell, God bless him! But be he base or glorious Time puts it wholly up to us To dress him!

Bangs personifies the New Year as a foundling left on the doorstep by “Daddy Time,” naked and undefined. The infant’s eventual character—whether “Churl or doughty Knight,” aligned with darkness or light—is unknowable at birth; the decisive point is that its moral and experiential “clothing” will be supplied by human choice and action. The poem thus shifts New Year’s sentiment away from fate or omens and toward responsibility: time delivers raw possibility, but individuals and communities shape what the year becomes through conduct, habits, and collective will. The blessing (“God bless him!”) underscores hope, while the final couplet insists on agency rather than mere optimism.