“Ring Out, Wild Bells,”

from the Loyola blog by Vinita...

We’ve sung and heard the popular stanza of this poem, “Ring Out, Wild Bells,” but it is from a much longer piece named “In Memoriam A.H.H.” Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote it in memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, a close friend and the fiancé of Tennyson’s sister. Hallam died suddenly at the age of 22. Over the next seventeen years, Tennyson worked on a set of poems that finally were woven into this single work, first published in 1850. Included here today are two short stanzas. What I love about the poem is that it acknowledges the darkness in life and why we so desperately need those Christmas bells to ring. Spend a little time with this. It’s an old poem, told in an old style, but its depth and beauty are truly stunning.

Stanza 28
The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.

Four voices of four hamlets round
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:

Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.

This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish’d no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:

But they my troubled spirit rule,
For they controll’d me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch’d with joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule.
. . .
Stanza 106
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.