The Instinct of Hope

Unknown

The Instinct of Hope

Is there another world for this frail dust

To warm with life and be itself again?

Something about me daily speaks there must,

And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?

'Tis nature's prophesy that such will be,

And everything seems struggling to explain

The close sealed volume of its mystery.

Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace

As seeming anxious of eternity,

To meet that calm and find a resting place.

E'en the small violet feels a future power

And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,

And surely man is no inferior flower

To die unworthy of a second spring?

John Clare

 "Why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?" Now that's a good question.
(John Clare! The more of his poems I read, the more I like them.) This line - "everything seems struggling to explain/the close sealed volume of its mystery."  A hidden-in-plain-sight secret? If all of nature dies, or lies dormant, hibernates, but "feels a future power", should we not trust to this also? I like that "surely man is no inferior flower". We have dormant seasons too; times of holding back, of waiting, of saying goodbye, of letting go. And all these are a kind of preparation, a storing up - of strength? of hope? of "future power"? Nature shows us faithfully, year after year, a new season is coming.