Yesterday 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 fulness of sunshine or sorrowful night.
Let them go, since we cannot relive 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.
Every day is a fresh beginning;
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain:
And spite of old sorrow and old sinning,
And puzzles forecasted and possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.
Prodigal Son in the Tavern (Rembrandt and Saskia)
Giclee Print
Rembrandt van…
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I looked at several depictions of the story of the prodigal son, mostly pictures showing the return of the prodigal to his Father, but I chose this painting by Rembrandt as the most interesting of the lot. They don’t really look very happy, do they? They look rather like people who are desperately trying to celebrate the new year, but instead of looking forward or at each other, they’re looking back at the artist. (Nowadays, they’d be posing for the camera.)
And the glass is already half empty. I get the idea that their “prodigal” days are numbered. Farm work will make short work of that hat and fine coat, and the sword will be less than useless among the pigs. It’s really a sad sort of picture even if they are smiling.
What an interesting pairing!
I love this pairing, too.
This Christmas I searched online for Christmas paintings, and felt like I discovered Rembrandt for the first time.