January 3, 2025
Featured Poem
I’ve selected a couple of poems to start off 2025. The first, Ring Out, Wild Bells may be from 1850 but seems just as applicable today. We live in a divisive world. More so now than I can remember since I was a child in the 1960s. While we got through that period without the all out civil war Tennyson experienced, combatants today have transitioned from rocks and knives to pipe bombs and assault rifles, and this raises the stakes considerably. My wish for 2025 is to ring out intolerance and ring in acceptance, even though we’re off to a very poor start.
And now for something a bit more fun. Ogden Nash is known for writing lighthearted poems full of interesting rhymes and quaint wisdom. Good Riddance, But Now What? is a perfect example of this and couldn’t be more appropriate at this time of year.
Ring Out, Wild Bells
By 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.
Good Riddance, But Now What?
By Ogden Nash
Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.
One reply on “The Poet’s Corner”
It was fun and cool to read The Raven again. You make me feel smart and educated.