Begin Again
A Poem of Hope
Begin Again is a poem of hope and encouragement. It speaks of how each and every day is a new beginning, where we can leave our past mistakes behind in yesterday, and start over with a clean, fresh slate and choose what our day will be like.
Begin Again
by Susan Coolidge
Every day is a fresh beginning,
Every day 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 errors let yesterday cover;
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 relieve 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 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 (1835 - 1905)
Susan Coolidge was the pen name used by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey.
Woolsey was an American children's writer who was born into a wealthy, influential family in Cleveland, Ohio. During the American Civil War (1861-1865) she worked as a nurse, but once the war was over, she began her writing career.
She is best known for her classic children's novel What Katy Did (1872). The fictional Carr family of that novel was modeled after the author's own family. Katy Carr was inspired by Sarah herself, while the siblings in the book were modeled after Woosley's own brothers and sisters.
Sarah Woolsey was also the aunt of Gamel Woolsey, a noted author and poet.
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