A poem for the New Year by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

From “In Memoriam” (CVI)

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light:

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind

For those that here we see no more;

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was an English poet and one of the most popular poets of the Victorian Era. He was the longest-serving Poet Laureate of England, a position he enjoyed from 1852 until his death. Tennyson’s verse covers an array of subjects, including medieval legend (“Idylls of the King”), classical myth (“Ulysses”) and observations of domestic life (“The Deserted House”) and nature (“The Eagle”). “In Memoriam,” a long poem of 133 cantos of varying length, each written in four-line iambic tetrameter stanzas, was penned as a tribute to a college friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, who had died at the age of 22 of a stroke. The repetitive quality of the stanzas and rhyme scheme create a somber, mournful effect, as Tennyson intended. The poem includes the famous tag, “’Tis better to have loved and lost/Than to never have loved at all.” It was one of Queen Victoria’s favorite poems.