Happy New Year's Eve

Ring Out Wild Bells (from In Memoriam  by 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 for gold;

     Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.