The Remorseful Day

Checking my email this morning, I see that PBS has a video about the final season of Endeavour. The video, it turns out, is simply Shaun Evans (who plays Endeavour Morse) reading A.E. Housman's poem, How Clear, How Lovely Bright.

I guess that the poem is meant to describe the stages of one's life, from youthful hope to regrets in old age. But yesterday's events - the shooting deaths of 19 children and 2 teachers in Uvalde, Texas - lay heavy on my mind, and I heard the poem in that mindset. A child's day should indeed begin lovely bright, with glee - but it ought not to end in such remorse.

How Clear, How Lovely Bright
by A.E. Housman

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.