Ring Out, Wild Bells

At Church on Sunday, Emily Smith mentioned that this is her favorite hymn. She hoped Dick and Julie Bell came and sat by us as we sang the hymn in Sacrament Meeting. The Wild Bells, you know. Emily has such a precocious sense of humor. (The Bells are mild-mannered, quiet – totally opposite of wild!) Anyway, when I came home and looked up the entire poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, I was astounded to realize how he foresaw the problems and challenges of our day nearly 200 years ago. I guess kindness, honesty, integrity, and truth are timeless. (BTW, the music in our hymnal, page 215, by Crawford Gates, detracts from rather than enforces the message. Maybe a choir with practice could pull it off but our congregation could not.)

  

In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells]

           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.

For me as I start this new year,

things are dimming.

Less energy.

More effort to get things done.

Harder to go up and down stairs.

Less fervor.

I think it’s finally weighing down on me.

I don’t know if it’s the cancer;

The medication;

Saturation of medical procedures

Old age;

Winter;

Diminishing faculties;

Ebb and flow;

I just don’t know.