Hope smiles from the threshold of years to come, whispering; “It will be happier.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The New Year
by Henry Wilmarth Hazzen (1842 – 1899)
As speed the years in their unceasing roll,
A sense of newness fills each breaking morn;
And aims, by which we would our lives dorn,
Fresh impulse gain from out each anxious soul.
Yet with each falling night misgivings come
From partial failure, warding off dismay
By new resolves that wait the coming day,—
When, lo! the Fates our purpose will benumb.
Master is he, thus conscious of life’s stress,
Who, year by year thro’ toil, a path has found
To best from better, as its vantage ground;
And he whose mission, too, has been far less,
To strive in sunshine, than in shadows grope,
Still finds his heart replete with youth and hope.
In Memoriam (Ring Out, Wild Bells)
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 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.
Fourteen Lines 