RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW

 

RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW

“Ring out the old, ring in the new” is a line taken from the poem “Ring Out, Wild Bells, written by the British poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892).

The poem itself is an extract from “In Memoriam, an elegy written on  the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, his sister’s fiancé.

  Tennyson was a great poet of the Victorian age which took the view that poetry should teach a moral lesson. Surprisingly enough, Tennyson sacrificed his native creative impulse and yielding to the pressure of his age became a preacher as well as a poet.    

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” is an immortal poem.  Published in 1850, its contents have not dated even after 171 years. What it wants to ring out and ring in is the need of every country and will remain  so for decades, if not centuries, to come.   

The poem reads as follows:

 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,

Rind in redress to all mankind.

 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the time;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhyme,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

 

Ring out false pride in place of 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 t he 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.

 

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31^st December 2021               G.R.Kanwal