Morning painted in 1879 in oil on canvas by Thomas Wilmer Dewing,1851-1938, American. 

Delaware Museum of Art, Wilmington, Delaware. 

A greyhound and a saluki, the swiftest and most gracious dogs, wait for the sound of the bugles which will be a signal to them that they can run like the wind.

The clouds, the forward growth of the bush, the horizontal of the bugles, the muzzles of the dogs are all aligned with each other in this moment of  expectant quiet before the sound and the movement. 

A new morning.

There is one reminder of our human condition: the marble catafalque on which the woman sits and by which a second woman stands.  That, of course, is a tomb and a reminder that death is always with us.

But and so on we go.  A new year.