Tuesday
Things have been so bleak for the past four years that it’s hard to believe we can begin to hope again. Nevertheless, with the United States now administering two million vaccinations daily (with 4.5 million vaccinations given out Saturday) and Joe Biden’s historic Covid relief bill promising to cut child poverty in half (along with many other remarkable benefits), there are grounds for optimism.
I therefore turn to a hopeful poem from an unlikely source. One wouldn’t normally expect Thomas Hardy to compose a “Song for Hope,” but he is imagining a “gleaming”—“dimmed by no gray”–that “soon will be streaming” come “sweet Tomorrow.”
Given how much damage the Trump administration has inflicted upon us, I am particularly open to Hardy’s image of mending and tuning a broken fiddle. It’s time to shed our black clothing and put on our red dancing shoes (or “shoon”).
To be sure, all of this will happen tomorrow, not today. “Hope springs eternal in the human breast:/ Man never is, but always to be blest,” Alexander Pope informs us in Essay on Man. I can imagine Hardy’s song being sung by workingmen in a rural pub, buoyed up by momentary optimism. Still, in America today, the night cloud does indeed appear to be “hueing,” which means taking on color.
Tomorrow shines soon.
Song of Hope By Thomas Hardy O sweet Tomorrow! – After today There will away This sense of sorrow. Then let us borrow Hope, for a gleaming Soon will be streaming, Dimmed by no gray – No gray! While the winds wing us Sighs from The Gone, Nearer to dawn Minute-beats bring us; When there will sing us Larks of a glory Waiting our story Further anon – Anon! Doff the black token, Don the red shoon, Right and retune Viol-strings broken; Null the words spoken In speeches of rueing, The night cloud is hueing, Tomorrow shines soon – Shines soon!
