Poetry Friday

 2021! A new year! I don't really make resolutions, but I do spend time thinking about the last year, and about what I want to do differently. This year, I want to get back to writing, and back to blogging more. I want to participate in Poetry Friday, hopefully with some of my own work, but if not, at least something. I think that's going to be my biggest goal for the year, is to let go of perfectionism and just put myself out there somehow. In that spirit, I don't have anything original or new or surprising today, but I do at least have a poem I love. So here is today's offering, a poem prayer for 2021. 

For more poetry, head over to Ruth's Blog, "There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town.

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.