"Ring out, wild bells"
From In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
 
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.


 
Tennyson’s In Memoriam is an elegy for a friend who died young - and much more. It’s also an exploration of grief, faith, and the anxieties of the Victorian age, when science and technology seemed to be moving far too quickly, leaving humanity behind.
 
In Memoriam consists of 129 poems, which can be read separately—as we are reading number 104 today – or as a narrative which loosely follows the progress of Tennyson’s grief. We sense the chronology through the recurrence of Christmas three times in the course of the poem, marking the passage of years. The first Christmas comes “sadly,” the second “calmly,” and the third “strangely”: living in a new place, the poet experiences Christmas differently. He is in a new place when it comes to his long period of mourning, too. As he listens to the bells of New Year’s Eve, ringing out the old, ringing in the new, he is overwhelmed with the desire to move on. “Ring out the grief that saps the mind / For those that here we see no more,” he says. He also wants to break away from the poetry of sadness, and do something new: “Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes / But ring the fuller minstrel in.”
 
The poet longs for a personal transformation, but he doesn’t stop there. He wants to ring in a new year of transformation for the nation and the world. He wants these bells to ring out “the feud of rich and poor” and “the faithless coldness of the times.” And, in words that will certainly resonate for us in this moment, he pleads for an end to “ancient forms of party strife… the civic slander and the spite.” In their place he wants “nobler modes of life,” “love of truth and right… [and] the common love of good…”
 
On the cusp of a new year, Tennyson prays for a new self, a new nation, a new world. In the end, his prayer becomes an Advent prayer: “ring in the Christ that is to be.”
 
Whether intentionally or not, Tennyson’s poem echoes the Biblical tradition of the Jubilee Year, which was a time of freedom and rest—a sabbath year. Debts were to be forgiven, and even the land was to be allowed to lie fallow. It was a year to reset and renew, to redress the imbalances in society. The Jubilee is part of the Christian tradition, too. When Jesus stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth at the beginning of his public ministry, he quoted words of the prophet Isaiah – Jubilee words:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”
 
In 2025 the Church will keep another Jubilee. It’s a year for pilgrimages – to Rome, to the Cathedral, and to other places as well – and spiritual practices, like obtaining the special Jubilee indulgence for ourselves or our deceased loved ones. But the Jubilee is not meant to stop at the doors of our churches. The Jubilee is meant to touch society and the world, bringing hope to the sick and the imprisoned, peace to those who suffer in conditions of war, and release to those burdened by debt – including whole nations. The Jubilee is meant to be a sign of hope, not only to believers, but to the whole world, especially the poor.
 
As we enter this season of Advent, the beginning of a new Church year, let us look ahead to the Jubilee, and accept its challenge to be what Pope Francis calls “Pilgrims of Hope.” May each of us be renewed in our faith in Christ, who is our hope, and may we become signs of hope to others, agents of transformation in our communities and our world. “Ring in the valiant… and [the] free, / The larger heart, the kindlier hand; / Ring out the darkness of the land, / Ring in the Christ that is to be.”