Happy New Year!

 My Grandparents grew up in an era where poetry was taught and learned in school.
They both also had quite a few poems memorized.
My mother also knew poetry, & poets, and I remember her "saying poems".

I was read poems, and quoted poems from an early age, so even tho I ended up in a "non-era" in school as far as poetry, I still was surrounded with it, however memorizing is just not my forte.

I am familiar with many poems and titles of books along with the authors names probably mostly not only because of their interest in poetry and reading, but because we spent hours when we were growing up, playing the card game of Authors.

One poem came to mind last night that was a favorite of my grandma Ruth.  I remember her reading/quoting it on New Years eve when we were together, and then later my mom would read it from a very lovely old vintage book.
My grandma would get choked up when she read it, and as a child of course I didn't understand why.
Now in later years when I read thru it or hear my mother's voice, yes it's me tearing up, and the more I can truly appreciate the words in the poem.
Time seems to have a way of doing things like that to a person.


 Ring Out, Wild Bells

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 thy 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.

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Published in 1850