Rest in Peace 2013

Tennyson's "In Memoriam" is not the longest poem in the English language but it is the most agonizing to read.

Punctuated by moments of reflection, despair, uplift and serenity, it ends with a famous section that has become a poem in its own right, "Ring Out Wild Bells."

It's too bad in a way, this skiving off, because its ecstasy cannot be savored without going through the trauma of death and acceptance that Tennyson himself endured over the loss of his friend, Arthur Hallam who had befriended him at Cambridge.

It's safe to say that "In Memoriam" is a deliberate catharsis of the feelings of doubt and hopelessness that Tennyson felt, a despair he links consciously and liturgically to the passing of the year over a succession of Christmases.

New Year's has become the most trivial of holidays, but in human history from our earliest known epic right up through the story of creation in the Book of Genesis, written to be recited by priests, it is our most enduring human celebration.

It is all about death and renewal--a sort of Christmas, Good Friday and Easter packed into one unlikely holiday. It shows that what human beings want most of all is not eternal life but a new beginning--another chance. It sees death as a cutting off of opportunity and judgment as lived, conscious regret. That is why medieval theology defined punishment for sin as everlasting consciousness of sin--an eternity of lost chances. The New Year celebration was a perennial reminder that we must change our lives and change our minds: the "resolution" is the flimsy reminder of what was once a law of consciousness.

It is looking back in despair, as Tennyson does, and forward in hope--like Janus himself, the two-faced God who gave his name to this month.


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.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/pr...