Evelyn de Morgan, “Hope in a Prison of Despair”
Thursday
Sometimes, after a spate of bad news, we need a hopeful poem to pick us up. This lyric by British poet Sheenagh Pugh quietly reminds us that “sometimes things don’t go, after all, from bad to worse”–which seems a particularly British way of expressing hope. The doomsayers may have had their day in recent years, but they are not always right.
The poem reminds of Bertolt Brecht’s wonderful “Compassion,” which I’ve shared here. “Sometimes” ends with a blessing.
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Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen to you.
