The painting ‘A Greater Morning’ (pictured above) powerfully conveys what many feel with the onset of the New Year: a sense of hope and renewal, of a new beginning. The same sentiment is expressed in different but equally engaging ways in the following poems. I hope you all enjoy reading these literary gems as much as I have.
The Old Year
by John Clare (English, 1793 – 1864)
The Old Year’s gone away
To nothingness and night:
We cannot find him all the day
Nor hear him in the night:
He left no footstep, mark or place
In either shade or sun:
The last year he’d a neighbour’s face,
In this he’s known by none.
All nothing everywhere:
Mists we on mornings see
Have more of substance when they’re here
And more of form than he.
He was a friend by every fire,
In every cot and hall—
A guest to every heart’s desire,
And now he’s nought at all.
In Tenebris
Ford Madox Ford (English, 1873 – 1939)
All within is warm,
Here without it’s very cold,
Now the year is grown so old
And the dead leaves swarm.
In your heart is light,
Here without it’s very dark,
When shall I hear the lark?
When see aright?
Oh, for a moment’s space!
Draw the clinging curtains wide
Whilst I wait and yearn outside
Let the light fall on my face.
In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells]
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)
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.
