New Year's Evening

Another circle around the sun is complete, and nobody will tell me how many more we must do. The earth is back where it started and there is No Progress.

Australia is a terribly advanced country, and almost all of the world's marsupials are already facing up to the horrors of 2011, meanwhile beavers and bald eagles languish and linger in 2010. Under the old system, days started at sunset and the eve, even or evening was therefore part of the following day.

If you want a useful word, then an apophoret is a gift given on New Year's Eve. I recommend gin.

Anyway, for those like me who shudder at the pedicular Scottish doggerel that Burns so optimistically called poetry, here's a sober little something by Charles Lamb from his poem The New Year. My apophoret to you, dear poetic reader.

Why should we then suspect or fear 
The influences of a year, 
So smiles upon us the first morn, 
And speaks us good so soon as born?
Plague on't ! the last was ill enough, 
This cannot but make better proof; 
Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through 
The last, why so we may this too; 
And then the next in reason should 
Be superexcellently good; 
For the worst ills (we daily see) 
Have no more perpetuity, 
Than the best fortunes that do fall; 
Which also bring us wherewithal 
Longer their being to support. 
Than those do of the other sort; 
And who has one good year in three, 
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ungrateful in the case,
And merits not the good he has.

And to all* readers, a superexcellently good New Year.

The Inky Fool composing tomorrow's post

*With a couple of exceptions.