Ring out, wild bells!

The greatest New Year's Eve poem of them all? A short introduction

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.

In 1850, Alfred Tennyson was finally persuaded to publish In Memoriam, AHH. It was a poem he had been working on for some seventeen years, since Arthur Henry Hallam, his friend from Cambridge, and the fiance of his sister Emily, died of cerebral haemorrhage at the age of twenty-two. It’s nearly three thousand lines long, over 100 separate songs or cantos, some elegiac for his friend, others more meditative on the tragedies of life and the difficulties of faith. Ring Out Wild Bells is one of the better known cantos, and every year at this time I read it again and it seems to have more resonance.

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.

Tennyson’s religious doubts had been one of the reasons that Emily Sellwood had felt unable to marry him when he had first proposed in 1837 (the principal reason being his lack of money!). Although he published some successful volumes of poetry in the 1830s, and 1840s, including his famous works Ulysses and The Lady of Shallott, it was In Memoriam that made him wealthy enough to marry, and won him the position of Poet Laureate. Emily Sellwood became his wife in June 1850, and was his constant support and stay throughout his life.

Emily, Lady Tennyson

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.

The poem has been set to music many times: lines from the poem are inscribed onto church bells in Manchester Town Hall and Gresham School. One particular translation into Swedish has been performed at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Stockholm since 1897, and is broadcast on national television, according to Wikipedia.

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.

For all of my subscribers, may I wish you a very happy 2024, with sweeter manners, purer laws, the larger heart and the kindlier hand. And may we never stop wishing for the thousand years of peace.

PS: If you would like to hear me read the poem, use the ‘voiceover’ button at the top of this post