Ring Out, Wild Bells

By Alfred Tennyson

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” is a 32-line section of Alfred Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850) in which the speaker, on New Year’s Eve, calls on the church bells to ring out the old year’s grief and ring in a better world. It is numbered 106 in Tennyson’s final text, and its line “Ring out the old, ring in the new” has made it a New Year’s poem around the world.

Our reading is that the poem is a turning point in a long elegy, not a party poem. After years of mourning his friend Arthur Hallam, the speaker lets the bells carry his own “mournful rhymes” out with the old year.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

On a frosty New Year’s Eve, the speaker calls on the bells to ring out the dying year and ring in the new. He asks them to ring out what is false, bitter, and divisive: grief for the dead, the feud between rich and poor, party strife, pride, slander, disease, greed, and war.

In their place, he asks the bells to ring in truth, justice for all, kinder manners and better laws, love of the common good, and a thousand years of peace. He even asks them to ring out his own “mournful rhymes.” The poem ends by calling in a braver, larger-hearted humanity and “the Christ that is to be.”

The Poem

The text below follows the first edition of In Memoriam (Edward Moxon, 1850), where the section is numbered CIV.

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.

Background

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” is not a separate poem but one section of In Memoriam A.H.H., Tennyson’s long elegy for his closest friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly in Vienna on September 15, 1833, at the age of 22. Tennyson wrote the elegy in short lyrics over the next 17 years, and it was published anonymously by Edward Moxon in 1850. That same year he married Emily Sellwood and was named Poet Laureate.

In the first edition, this section was numbered CIV (104). Tennyson later added two sections earlier in the sequence, so in his final text, and in most modern editions, it is CVI (106). It falls near the end of the poem’s third Christmas season, as the speaker’s grief begins to turn outward toward hope. Local tradition in Waltham Abbey, Essex, holds that the “wild bells” were those of the town’s abbey church, which Tennyson could hear while living nearby at High Beach in the late 1830s.

Analysis and Themes

Read on its own, the poem is a stirring New Year’s wish list. Read in place, it is also the moment when a man who has grieved for years decides to let the old year, and part of his grief, go.

Letting the Year Die

The first stanza treats the old year as a dying man: “The year is dying in the night; / Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.” In an elegy about the death of a friend, this is a striking permission. The bells that usually toll for the dead are asked to ring out a death calmly, and the second stanza repeats the idea more gently: “The year is going, let him go.”

From Private Grief to Public Hope

The third stanza begins with personal sorrow, “the grief that saps the mind, / For those that here we see no more,” and then turns at once to the wider world: “the feud of rich and poor.” From there the poem becomes a program of reform. It asks for justice for “all mankind,” an end to party strife, “sweeter manners, purer laws,” and the end of greed, disease, and war. Tennyson was writing In Memoriam through years of poverty and political unrest in Britain, and the poem’s hopes are social as well as spiritual.

Ringing Out His Own Poem

The fifth stanza turns the bells on the poet himself: “Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, / But ring the fuller minstrel in.” The mournful rhymes are the elegy he has been writing for years. He is asking for a new, fuller voice to replace his grieving one, a remarkable admission from inside the poem that mourning must eventually give way.

The Christ That Is to Be

The last line reaches furthest: “Ring in the Christ that is to be.” It can be read as a hope for the Second Coming, but the phrase “that is to be” also suggests a Christ-like humanity still in the making, the “valiant man and free” with “The larger heart, the kindlier hand.” Elsewhere in In Memoriam, Tennyson imagines Hallam as a forerunner of that better human type, so the ending quietly connects the lost friend to the future the bells announce.

Form and Technique

The poem has 32 lines in eight quatrains of iambic tetrameter, as in “ring OUT the OLD, ring IN the NEW.” Each stanza rhymes ABBA, the pattern now called the In Memoriam stanza. The enclosed rhyme, with the outer lines framing the inner couplet, gives each stanza a closed, circling shape that suits the swing of a bell.

The main device is anaphora: nearly every stanza begins with “Ring out” or “Ring in,” and the two commands alternate like the two notes of a pealing bell. Tennyson also pairs opposites within single lines, such as “the old” and “the new” and “the false” and “the true,” so that each line performs the exchange the poem asks for. The phrase “Ring out” means both “ring loudly” and “ring away,” and the poem uses both senses.

Notable Lines

These lines carry the poem from farewell to hope.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

Lines 5 to 6

The most quoted lines, now a New Year’s saying in their own right.

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Lines 19 to 20

The poet asks the bells to carry away his own elegy, a turning point in In Memoriam.

Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Lines 27 to 28

The widest hope in the poem, balanced perfectly between the past and the future.

Themes

Four ideas run through the poem.

Renewal. The New Year stands for every fresh start, personal and public. The poem insists that the old must be let go before the new can come.

Grief and healing. Within In Memoriam, the poem marks the speaker’s decision to stop living only in mourning.

Social justice. The bells are asked to end the feud of rich and poor, the lust for gold, and party strife, and to bring in fairer laws.

Faith and progress. The poem ends with a vision of a better humanity and “the Christ that is to be,” joining Christian hope to the Victorian belief in progress.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “Ring Out, Wild Bells.”

What is “Ring Out, Wild Bells” about?

It is about letting the old year go on New Year’s Eve. The speaker asks the bells to ring out grief, injustice, greed, and war, and to ring in truth, justice, kindness, and peace.

Who wrote “Ring Out, Wild Bells”?

Alfred Tennyson wrote it as part of In Memoriam A.H.H., his elegy for his friend Arthur Hallam. It was published in 1850, the year Tennyson became Poet Laureate.

Is “Ring Out, Wild Bells” part of In Memoriam?

Yes. It is section 106 of In Memoriam A.H.H. in Tennyson’s final text, and section 104 in the first edition of 1850. It is often printed on its own under its opening words.

What does “ring out the old, ring in the new” mean?

It means to say goodbye to the past year, with its troubles, and welcome the new one. In the poem, the bells ring the old year away and ring in a hoped-for better future.

Why is “Ring Out, Wild Bells” read on New Year’s Eve?

Because it is set on New Year’s Eve and turns the midnight bells into a wish for a better year. In Sweden, a translation called “Nyårsklockan” has been read aloud at Skansen in Stockholm every New Year’s Eve since 1897.

Glossary

A few words are worth pinning down.

• saps (line 9): Gradually drains or weakens.
• redress (line 12): Justice; the setting right of a wrong.
• party strife (line 14): Quarrels between political parties.
• minstrel (line 20): A singer or poet.
• pride in place and blood (line 21): Snobbery about social rank and family descent.
• civic (line 22): Having to do with public life and citizens.

In Popular Culture

The poem has become a New Year’s tradition well beyond England.

In Sweden, Edvard Fredin’s translation, “Nyårsklockan” (“The New Year’s Bell”), has been read aloud at the open-air museum Skansen in Stockholm on New Year’s Eve since 1897, and the reading has been broadcast on Swedish television since 1977.

Composers from Charles Gounod to Karl Jenkins have set the words to music, and Jenkins used stanzas from it in The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace (2000). The hymn “Ring Out, Wild Bells” also appears in several church hymnals.

Related Poems

If this poem speaks to you, these are good to read next.

• Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Another poem in which bells answer despair with a promise of peace.
• Crossing the Bar by Alfred Tennyson: Tennyson’s calm late poem about his own death, written near the end of his life.
• The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy: A poem written at the turn of the century that hears an uncertain hope in a bird’s song.
• Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson: Written soon after Hallam’s death, a poem about refusing to give in to grief and age.