HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Like so many people I know who were raised after the days of compulsory Latin in schools, I’m basically a literary and cultural illiterate who has faked his way through the situation more successfully than others.  If I speak honestly and attribute my success to a very retentive memory for periodical literature beginning with Issue No. 1 of People magazine (which began publishing when I was in college), you might accuse me of being glib (a possible failing;  at least I’m not mean or a liar), but you would be mistaken.  So, when I eventually learned the origin of the phrase “hope springs eternal” in Alexander Pope’s 1734 poem "An Essay On Man," I regarded this as significant progress.

 

I suppose hope can spring that way on certain days, but not on others.  None of those days has been on the calendar lately and I’m not forecasting any change in mood’s weather.  It’s sunny and cold outside and everything seems dreadful.  I believe I offended a friend the other day (through what was probably perceived as glibness, nothing more, and the perception was mistaken; sometimes expression is imperfect and I was trying to be light and complimentary) and I don’t greatly care.

This week is "Hamlet” week in our house and I would like to take arms against a sea of troubles.  Instead, I think I will make myself as invisible as permissible and speak little.  The other day I passed along advice not to hit “send.”  Today I say . . . say nothing. 

YEAR OF THE SNAKE (THAT'S ALRIGHT BY ME)

Nervous words and empty motions

Claim symptoms just too plain to pass

I don't know where you think you're going

But you have drained my love at last

Tomorrow I'll be slowly moving

I can't waste all my days the same

Don't stop to think of where I might be

Don't stop to figure who's to blame

The clock chimes four you'll turn again then

To take pursuit of empty dreams

My sensitivity is dying

You're bound to some day think of me

So now this house has grown too small

Don't think of how it used to be

You say you live now in tomorrow

And there I sense you don't see me

 

Note:  Kind soul gazzaw2004 added Gene's Clark's great song "That's Alright By Me" onto youtube, making sharing it irresistible.


I rearranged the order of the verses for the page as a tribute to Gene's earlier, bolder effort reordering Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man lyric on Firebyrd. 


Gene Clark's talent was precious and endures.  And but for the sky there are no fences facing.


That's Alright By Me -- Gene Clark (Link)