Here is Hope
Optimism
by A.V. Ratcliffe
At last there’ll dawn the last of the long year,
Of the long year that seemed to dream no end;
Whose every dawn but turned the world more drear
And slew some hope, or led away some friend.
Or be you dark, or buffeting, or blind,
We care not, Day, but leave not death behind.
The hours that feed on war go heavy-hearted:
Death is no fare wherewith to make hearts fain;
Oh! We are sick to find that they who started
With glamour in their eyes come not again.
O Day, be long and heavy if you will,
But on our hopes set not a bitter heel.
For tiny hopes, like tiny flowers of spring,
Will come, though death and ruin hold the land;
Though storms may roar they may not break the wing
Of the earthed lark whose song is ever bland.
Fell year unpitiful, slow days of scorn,
Your kind shall die, and sweeter days be born.
In this war poem we see the long dark winter days of war give way to the spring of hope. How soldier, family and country as a whole must have longed and hoped for peace. As loved ones fell day after day on the battle fieild, fighter after fighter fell from the skies in the battle of britain and U boats sent seamen one by one to thier watery grave, how the hope of better days must have lay warm iin the hearts of british people like members in a fire in the grate, occasionally warmed by the rousing speaches of Churchill.
Until the day dawned and the cry went up the war is over, that the voice of victory crackled out across the radio, and minutes later people emerge from thier houses as if they were dreaming, until the truth dawns upon thier souls the war is over and peace is here. The joy of jubilation fills thier souls,thier faces and the street.
The christian knows the meaning of this hope too as he awaits the long awaited victory over sin and the flesh. The battle is long and grievous, sin often has the upper hand and gets him low. However there is victor who has gone before and dealt the death blow to death itself. The Saviour Jesus Christ. He went out a warrrior against the great enimy of our souls;- sin, death, and hell and cameback from the dead victorious vanquishing all his foes so that all who trust in him can know certain victory over the worst of enemies.
