I was reminded of the below poem by A. E. Housman, while watching a dramatisation of “The Remorseful Day”, the last in the Inspector Morse series, in which Morse meets his maker (or perhaps not as Morse is an atheist).

Houseman brilliantly captures the desire of man to mend his ways, to become a better person but, in the final verse all hopes are reduced to dust and, as Housman puts it

“falls the remorseful day”.

 

 

 

“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.”