Happy New Year and Welcome to 2025!

Today is the first official day of a new year.  I wanted to share two poems that I thought were appropriate for New Year's Day.  The first is a classic by Lord Alfred Tennyson called "Ring Out, Wild Bells" from his work In Memoriam:

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.

The second poem was written by Naomi Shihab Nye and is called "Burning the Old Year":

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

I think both poems speak to the transition that occurs at around midnight on December 31st.  Tennyson suggests that we ring out the old year and ring in the new one, and that whatever happened in 2024 is behind us now.  Therefore, we should look towards the new year in 2025 with optimism and hope.  Nye similarly suggests that we burn the old year and forget about it.  Again, what happened last year is now forgotten.  Let's look to the new year and start anew.