Personification

I just came across this one on dictionary.com


Somewhere in the incunabulum of time the New Year lay awaiting birth. Outside, in the dark, and with none to call it friend, the old year was fading into death.
-- Edwin Markham, The real America in romance, Volume 12

I think this sentence is beautiful and like the personification of the two different years- the new one about to be born and the old one dying.