"Clear, Bright and Lovely!"

Sunlight peeped in through windows for a while yesterday afternoon. It appeared as if Sir Covid-XIX had disappeared into collective oblivion. People spilled out on streets. The playgrounds that have been barricaded so that children don’t come near each other became hotbeds of gleeful children and adults alike, albeit around the barricades.

Here’s one of A E Housman’s poems that takes us on an unexpected journey from one stanza to another, describing the beauty of sunlight, to a contemplative note on personal values, to a more pensive comment on the ephemerality of a moment.

‘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.’

While life continues unchanged in some respects for most of Hong Kong, Sir Covid-XIX has accorded us all the luxury of slowing down in some ways. Reluctantly as it may be, we have settled into a state of acceptance that nature will run its courses, humans cannot dictate terms to nature, and difficult as it may appear to the arrogant human mind – deference to laws of nature is the only way to make peace.

‘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.’

The unexpected jolts in our otherwise comfortable lives that this epidemic has brought bring us face to face with the futile pursuits we all indulge in all the time. This and every other moment will fade away before we know. Grabbing it and making the most of it is something we all must do!