A Poem for the New Year

If you've been reading this blog for several years, you might recall having read this poem before. It's a wonderful one for the new year.

Next week, we'll hear a fresh word from Judith! 

Thanks for reading! 

Begin Again

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 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 relive 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 with 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.

Susan Coolidge