Dec. 16

Today’s tea was a breakfast blend, which you might think the Advent Calendar associated with England, but which in practice they associated with India.

Fair enough. Many of the black teas in this blend were Indian – Assam, Darjeeling, that kind of thing. It’s not the world’s most exciting tea to write about. Once you add milk it tastes like any other store-bought black tea, however big the leaves are. But it’s good for waking up to, and we still have some left over.

At this point in the calendar, it’s worth saying this is the most well-balanced David’s Tea has been about it’s 24 Days of Tea thing. For one thing, there’s a lot less stevia in these teas. We aren’t frantically trying to describe sugary herbal blends that all pour out pink. These are teas that are teas. The Around the World them helped keep it focused.

Next week will be the test, presumably, but so far, so good. We’d buy this calendar again. Even without the tins. It’s been fun.

So, this poem isn’t a reflection on the tea at all – except inasmuch as whatever the calendar says, we associate breakfast blends with England, and it’s hard to get more quintessentially English than Inspector Morse – TV and book models.

But the thing TV Morse doesn’t tell you is just how wide Dexter cast his net of allusions. One book opened each chapter with a cryptic crossword clue, which, by the way, is how we learned to solve cryptic crosswords. Every book had one pivotal reveal contingent on Morse solving a crossword clue that stumped him, and the trick was to crack it before he did, because it was always thematically relevent.

But the last Morse book took it’s title from an A.E. Houseman poem, so every chapter opened with a stanza from a Houseman poem. And this is the one everyone remembers, because it gets quoted as that ubiquitous theme plays over the series final episode. We haven’t seen the final series of Endeavour, but we sort of hope they loop back to ‘How Clear, How Lovely Bright’ for the symmetry. And because Morse was right; Houseman’s a brilliant poet.

How Clear, How Lovely Bright
A. E. Houseman

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.

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.