The Remorseful Day

When I heard young Morse (in a repeat of Endeavour)  recite the last two stanzas of A.E. Houseman’s  “How Clear, How Lovely Bright"  I realised that my attitude has lately changed to a calmer, lighter mood. Not that there have been any great differences in our circumstances, it’s simply that I am perhaps coming to terms with what cannot be altered. At least, I hope so. What lies beyond our control must be endured. Sitting, like Mimir the Dwarf in the hole at the foot of the dead sycamore tree, plotting, worrying and endlessly turning the same problem over in my mind won’t bring relief.

I’ve also found my material feet, which helps. All the legal formalities have been dealt with - and paid for. ouch! - . I have a brand-new, fat file full of solicitors’ letters, legal documents and official declarations. Neither one of us likes it but, there you are. It was necessary.

Most of the long neglected jobs around house and garden have been tackled; I have assumed responsibility for them and, being a rather methodical and tidy person, they have been initiated, if not completed. Beloved is more the type who puts jobs on lists, where they are allowed to grow whiskers. In his opinion, collecting items on a list means that the job is half done. Not so, as far as I’m concerned. Now there’s only the large-ish stain on the sitting room ceiling to be dealt with; the bath in the room above overflowed and the stain is most unsightly. I dread the thought of emptying the sitting room of furniture; let’s see, perhaps I can organise a couple of hefty chaps to do it. Painters are notoriously slow in coming, so maybe I shall have to live with the stain for a while yet.

Another thing which has helped enormously is that I have taken to gardening again. I know I’ve rather been going on about gardening recently, but the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. The same applies to keyboard and fingers, in this instance.  The place already shows signs of improvement, which spurs me on to get out there and labour.

There’s one other thing which has gone by the board, i.e. unresolved issues with people, family and acquaintances both. Up to a few months ago these issues would pop into my mind at the most unsuitable moments, I’d fret and worry at them and allow them to depress me. No more. When you are faced with a situation which goes right to the heart of existence itself, anything else becomes mere ballast, an irritation to be shed until such time as you actually have the strength - and time - to bring it up again from the depths. I am, of course, hoping that these issues will  have disappeared into outer space by then anyway. Never to resurface. Going back to the first paragraph: it’s best not to burden yourself with things you cannot change.

So, dear old A.E. Housman, who wrote the haunting poem "A Shropshire Lad" and whose ashes are buried just outside St. Lawrence’s Church in my county town of Ludlow, sent me a timely reminder on how to avoid The Remorseful Day. I cannot promise that every day I shall see the bright new morning, or that I shall be strong every day granted us, me and Beloved, but I shall endeavour.

How clear, how lovely bright

How beautiful to sight

    Those beams of morning play;

How heaven laughs out with glee

Where, like a bird set free,

Up from the eastern sea

    Soars the delightful day.

To-day I shall be strong,

No more shall yield to wrong,

    Shall squander life no more;

Days lost, I know not how,

I shall retrieve them now;

Now I shall keep the vow

    I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies

How heavily it dies

    Into the west away;

Past touch and sight and sound

Not further to be found,

How hopeless under ground

    Falls the remorseful day.