Hope’ is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul,” wrote Emily Dickinson. “And sore must be the storm / That could abash the little Bird / That kept so many warm.”

Staring ahead on New Year’s Eve, at what appear to be the coming storms of 2022, this once-hopeful country is going to have to fall back on its reserves.

What storms?

Suddenly, the omicron variant of the coronavirus is sweeping the nation, shutting schools, shops, restaurants and bars that were only lately reopened. In this last week of 2021, new infections twice set records.

Is a fifth wave of the pandemic arriving, just two years after the first wave hit in March 2020?

What is hopeful here?

While the numbers of infected are exploding and deaths are rising anew, the omicron variant appears to be less severe and less lethal than the delta variant — and possibly less enduring.

From the medical community one hears the hope that the omicron variant could displace the delta and, as has happened in South Africa, burn itself out.

Still, if the present rate of infections and deaths continues, we could have a virus-related million American deaths by spring.

A second storm is economic, with inflation now running at 6.8percent, the highest rate since the last days of Jimmy Carter and first days of Ronald Reagan.

Should this trend continue, inflation could be crushing to President Joe Biden’s party and presidency next November. And, according to Thursday’s Washington Post, that may be what is coming:

“Strong consumer demand, continuing supply chain troubles and the emergence of the omicron variant of the coronavirus threaten to prolong sharply rising prices well into 2022, potentially making inflation the premier economic challenge of the new year.”

As for U.S. economic growth, forecasts for the first quarter of 2022 are being cut back from 5.2percent to 2.2percent.

Nor does the world look any more tranquil from this vantage point.

In the second week of January, U.S. talks with Russia begin, probably in Geneva, on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand for assurances that Ukraine not be admitted into NATO and no U.S. offensive weapons be stationed in a border nation from which they can be used to attack Russia with only minutes notice.

The hopeful news: Putin reportedly ordered 10,000 of the 100,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s border back to their bases deeper in Russia.

Still, it is hard to believe Putin is bluffing when he says that if Ukraine is invited to become a full member of NATO, Russia will see to it that the consummation never comes to pass.

As for China, there is no sign it is backing off from any of its territorial demands — on its Himalayan border with India, with half a dozen rival nations in the South and East China seas, or with Taiwan.

Probably the best we can hope for in the simmering Taiwan crisis is that China will put off its insistence on annexation of the island of 24 million while it digests the lately free city of Hong Kong.

Negotiation with Iran on a mutual return to the 2015 nuclear deal appears to be nearing the fish-or-cut-bait moment.

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Pat Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist