Poem for the New Year

I was in the nursery on Sunday morning and missed hearing Steve Winget.  Larry told me about the message, and this poem leaped immediately to mind.  Years ago I taught sixth grade, and this was a work that my students were required to memorize. I had almost forgotten it, but I looked it up, and now I offer it for your enjoyment.  Susan Coolidge is the pen name of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey.  I think I would have liked her. 

Begin Again
by Susan Coolidge

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Every morn is the world made new;
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,
Here is a beautiful hope for you-
A hope for me and a hope for you.

All the past things are past and over,
The tasks are done and the tears are shed;
Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover;
Yesterday’s wounds, which smarted and bled,
Are healed with the healing which night has shed.

Yesterday now is a part of forever,
Bound up in a sheaf, which God holds tight;
With glad days, and sad days and bad days which never
Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight,
Their fullness of sunshine or sorrowful night.

Let them go, since we cannot relieve them,
Cannot undo and cannot atone;
God in His mercy, receive, forgive them;
Only the new days are our own,
Today is ours, and today alone.

Here are the skies all burnished brightly,
Here is the spent earth all reborn,
Here are the tired limbs springing lightly
To face the sun and to share the morn,
In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.

Every day is a fresh beginning;
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning,
And puzzles forecasted and possible pain
Take heart with the day, and begin again.

I find that I love this poem now even more than I did all those years ago.  I hope it's a blessing to you, as well.

Sherry Poff