Featured Poem: Nothing Will Die by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

One of the most noticeable and lively signs of Spring has to be that symbolic flower, the Daffodil (immortalised as it was in one of English literature's classic poems that we revisited not long ago) - those cheery yellow bursts of sunshine can brighten up an unseasonably grey day and fill you with positivity as you start out on another morning's commute. However, just the other week I was rather disheartened to find that the rows of daffodils I encountered on my way to work set amongst the roads and humming traffic had largely perished, only a couple of hardy survivors clinging on for dear life here and there.

It's with this in mind that I am enlivened by the strong sentiment conveyed in this poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Though it can be upsetting and puzzling to wade through change it remains an inevitable fact of life, and the notion that nothing ever really dies but rather waits to begin life again at some other stage is one that remains ever optimistic. A hopeful way to start your week - just as another Monday morning rolls around, we can be safe in the knowledge that Friday evenings will not die either.

Nothing Will Die

When will the stream be aweary of flowing
Under my eye?
When will the wind be aweary of blowing
Over the sky?
When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of beating?
And nature die?
Never, oh! never, nothing will die;
The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.

Nothing will die;
All things will change
Thro' eternity.
'Tis the world's winter;
Autumn and summer
Are gone long ago;
Earth is dry to the centre,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro' and thro',
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill'd with life anew.

The world was never made;
It will change, but it will not fade.
So let the wind range;
For even and morn
Ever will be
Thro' eternity.
Nothing was born;
Nothing will die;
All things will change.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson