A New Year’s Hope for Our Troubled Times: Tennyson’s ‘Ring Out, Wild Bells’

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” shifts in mood from grief to hope as Tennyson writes of the church bells ringing in the new year. “Abbey Church in Winter,” 19th century, by Carl Julius von Leypold. Oil on paper. (Public Domain)

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.

So begins Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ring Out, Wild Bells,” the last part of his long poem “In Memoriam A.H.H,” an elegy honoring the young poet and essayist Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson’s deceased friend and his sister’s fiancé.

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” marks a shift in the lengthy poem’s mood from grief and doubt to hope and acceptance as Tennyson (1809–1892) writes of church bells ringing in the new year. These verses became the lyrics for a hymn, often sung around New Year’s Day, and have inspired other musicians as well to set Tennyson’s words to music.

Though it appeared in 1850, this poem has a particularly pertinent message for Americans today as we step into 2023.

Tennyson asks the bells to “ring out the false” and ring in the noble, the true, and the good. “The Young Lady Bellringer,” 1875, by Otto Piltz. Oil on canvas. (Public Domain)

That last line cited above—“Ring out the false, ring in the true”—becomes the theme for the rest of the poem. At one point, Tennyson asks the bells to “Ring in the nobler modes of life,/ With sweeter manners, purer laws.” In the next stanza, we find “Ring out the want, the care, the sin,/ The faithless coldness of the times.” Next, he summons the bells to ring out “the civic slander and the spite” while ringing in “the love of truth and light” and the “common love of good.”

In the last stanza, Tennyson asks this of the bells:

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 does not forget the dead, his friend Hallam and others, asking the bells to “Ring out the grief that saps the mind/ For those that here we see no more.” Yet in the rest of the poem he takes the familiar New Year’s adage “Ring out the old and ring in the new” and refashions it into “Ring out the false” and ring in the noble, the true, and the good.

In no way does the poet advocate pitching out all the traditions and virtues of the past. No—by summoning to memory those customs and habits located in the “nobler modes of life,” Tennyson calls instead for a restoration of an earlier integrity, dignity, and morality. In the line “The faithless coldness of the times,” he clearly indicates that the age in which he lives is inferior to a brighter past.

It’s Time for a Renewal of Goodness

Tennyson’s ringing bells echo our own yearning for a renewal of goodness, truth, and beauty. “The Evening Bell,” 19th century, by Bernhard Stange. Oil on canvas. (Public Domain)

One of the gifts of the greatest works of art, and a quality that renders them classics, is their relevance to all peoples and times. They are like notes in a bottle, cast by their makers into the sea of time to later wash up on the shore with a message as fresh and as human as if they had been created that very day.

And so it is with “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” Given the tribulations of the last three years in our own country, from the disasters of the COVID pandemic to our disputed elections, from cultural upheavals to skyrocketing inflation, Tennyson’s ringing bells, with their hopes of revival and restoration, echo our own yearning for a renewal of goodness, truth, and beauty.

May the bells of 2023 ring out the darkness of our land and ring in a new and gleaming light on our country and its people.