A new year and a new decade

Saturday is the start of a new year; it is also the start of the second decade of the 21st century. If your first decade has been lost this a time for optimism, renewal and a fresh start; it is time to put right things that have gone wrong and throw away bad habits. One also has to be mindful that the future is uncertain and could be bleak as Thomas Hardy described 110 years ago in this hauntingly emotive poem.

The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware

Never give up when the outlook is seemingly bleak. You never know when your lucky break might arrive.