As the year wanes, Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ring Out, Wild Bells" calls to us, a clarion of hope and renewal amidst the echoes of loss. Together, we traverse the emotional landscape of Tennyson's masterpiece, "In Memoriam AHH," delving into the depths of his friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam and the resulting literary tribute. Through a heartfelt reading of the poem, we unravel layers of grief, truth-seeking, and the universal yearn for brighter days, offering you a chance to find solace and inspiration as the bells chime for change.
Join us as we embrace the transformative power of Tennyson's words, examining how the act of ringing out the old to welcome the new can mirror our own personal journeys of growth and healing. The episode becomes a sanctuary for contemplation, where the end of the year becomes not just a marker of time but a symbol of hope. Whether confronting personal sorrow or seeking motivation for the year ahead, we invite you to engage with this poetic exploration of the human spirit's resilience and the enduring promise of new beginnings.
As the year wanes, Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ring Out, Wild Bells" calls to us, a clarion of hope and renewal amidst the echoes of loss. Together, we traverse the emotional landscape of Tennyson's masterpiece, "In Memoriam AHH," delving into the depths of his friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam and the resulting literary tribute. Through a heartfelt reading of the poem, we unravel layers of grief, truth-seeking, and the universal yearn for brighter days, offering you a chance to find solace and inspiration as the bells chime for change.
Join us as we embrace the transformative power of Tennyson's words, examining how the act of ringing out the old to welcome the new can mirror our own personal journeys of growth and healing. The episode becomes a sanctuary for contemplation, where the end of the year becomes not just a marker of time but a symbol of hope. Whether confronting personal sorrow or seeking motivation for the year ahead, we invite you to engage with this poetic exploration of the human spirit's resilience and the enduring promise of new beginnings.
I hold it true. Whatever befall, I feel it when I sorrow most Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Welcome to another Troubadour show. Today I will be reading a section of In Memoriam AHH by Alfred Lord Tennyson. This is a very long poem so I'll be reading just a small section titled Ring Out Wild Bells. This poem is a great poem to close out the new year, to contemplate the old as you usher in the new. Ring out the old, out with the old, ring in the new. We'll read the poem and discuss as we go.
Kirk:First I want to give you a little bit of an understanding of the broader poem in which this comes from. So it's called In Memoriam AHH. The AHH stands for Arthur Henry Halem, which was Tennyson's closest friend, who died suddenly in 1833 at the age of 22. Halem wasn't just a friend to Tennyson, he was the source of artistic inspiration and literary confidence upon which the budding poet relied. And because of this and because of their bond, halem's death shattered Tennyson's world.
Kirk:Now the poem itself consists of 133 sections. It's epically long. It's not an epic, but it's epically long, and it details a three-year emotional journey of processing grief. And Tennyson took, I believe, 17 years to finish it. He publishes it in 1850. And so what you get is one of the great poems, or any kind of literary work, on processing loss, on dealing with loss and all the different psychological, experiential feelings, emotions, thoughts that go through many people's minds. So this is, I believe, a poem that everybody should read the longer poem, which we will not be reading today, because it's a profound experience and it's important to deal with loss and I think at the end of the year it's a good time to reflect on that. But the poem we're going to be focusing on is one that is a little bit more optimistic. Now there's still going to be it's still Tennyson so there's going to be a little bit of melancholy to it, I think. But overall it's got a beautiful story to tell about this person who's experiencing or thinking through the new year.
Kirk:And literally this is the poem, the excerpt which begins ring out wild bells to the wild sky, the flying cloud, the frosty light. This is in reference to the literal bells that would be ringing out in the new year, to ring in the new year and as Tennyson is going through his grief and the experience, he's thinking about the new year and the renewal and the ways of thinking about the future and how do you move on. And when you have loss, how do you move on past grief? So I'm going to read this poem. I'll bring the words on the screen so you can see them and read along, or you can just find them on your own or listen. The words are not very complex, so I'm first going to simply read the poem. I hope you'll listen along, take a break, listen while you're doing something, and then we'll go through it stanza by stanza. So I think it's a poem that you should just go through yourself a little bit. So feel free to just listen to the poem and move on. But there's because the again, I don't think there's a lot of complexity necessarily, but it's really trying to get you to feel and have an affectedness to it. So here's the poem, the excerpt from, in memoriam, a H H called.
Kirk:Ring out wild bells. No-transcript. 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. Ring out the year is going. Let him go.
Kirk:Ring out the false. Ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind For those that hear 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, modest modes of life with sweeter manners, pure 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 years 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 so. I hope you will go through that again yourself. Look at the words as we go. I'm going to go stand by, stand now to discuss a little bit what I think is going on. So we have it, beginning with a ring out, a call to these bells to ring out wild bells. You can imagine these bells being rung by people pulling on big ropes at the bottom of a cathedral and to the wild sky, the flying cloud, the frosty light. Now there's a rumor, a belief, a view, you know, idea that at the time that this was written, part of the inspiration was that there was a wild storm and On New Year's Eve and these bells were ringing out as Tennyson was feeling all of the things that he was feeling about the new year and Bringing it in and dealing with his grief and loss. Still so we, you should hear this these bells ring out, wild bells to the wild sky, the flying cloud, the frosty light. The year is dying in the night. So again they have this grief, this loss. Something has been taken, gone, it's, it's no longer here, the thing is gone, it's dead. Ring out wild bells and let him die. The, the stands, it ends. 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. So now he's, of course, you can tell, I'm sure that he's expanding the literal sound, even sight, of these bells, but primarily the sound of ringing ding dong. You should be hearing these in your head and he's he's making them now mean something. He's bringing in the meaning of now what we're ringing out and you can think of W? R? I N? G ring out, or ring out like Bring out your dad or like all different. I think all of those are being conjured in some way here and he's saying ring out the false, ring in the true. Well, what's the false and what's the true? Let's see if he goes into that.
Kirk:So the next stanza is ring out the grief that saps the mind. So if you've ever experienced a loss of any nature, whether that's the loss of a loved one being taken from you in death, or the loss of a loved one who you know a Wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, that separated from you and you no longer are with that person, so a breakup well there's this, there's a sapping of the mind. You, I'm sure you feel, have felt that ring out the grief. So get rid of that grief that saps the mind. That's what it does. Grief saps the mind and we need these ringing bells to take over our mind, to think about the next stage of our lives, the next year you know we're going into I'm reading this at the Last day of 2023 and we need that to ring it out. Get it out of your head for those that here we see no more. And Again, I think, in ten a since time he's referring to literal death. So if you've dealt with that, that's part of it. Ring for the. Ring out the grief that saps the mind for those that here we see no more. But again, I think we often lose. You know, doesn't not everything has to be death all the time. I mean, if you're dealing with that, that's very painful and difficult. It also could just be the loss of a friendship, the loss of a loved one, a lover, the loss of a relationship. Those are important too. Those losses matter. So ring out the grief that saps the mind for those that here we see no more.
Kirk:Ring out the feud of rich and poor. So now he's getting into a kind of social social justice type thing. This is 1850 and he's writing this in the mid 19th century, during Victorian or starting in the Victorian, starting the Victorian era. But there's a lot of upheaval in Europe. We have these new ideas, you know, these ideals that are coming and I think some of the ideals that they were fighting for in some of the revolutions that were popular or that happened in Europe for the last 50, 60 years, and a lot hasn't necessarily changed. So bring out the feud of rich and poor. Ring in redress to all mankind. Let's bring redress to all mankind. Next, stands up. So again we got a little political there.
Kirk:Ring out a slowly dying cause and ancient forms of party strife. So again he's out. Ring out a slowly dying cause. So get rid of these dying causes. Now he doesn't say if these are good causes or bad causes, but it's a dying cause, so get rid of it. It's sapping your brain grief. So again, it's not always just the loss of you know, like a friend that meant a lot to you, who has passed away literally, it could also mean you know many Europeans, many Englishmen, many poets like Tennyson's. A poet that Tennyson really loved was William Wordsworth, and in their youth these were poets who really believed in this revolution in the 1780s and 90s that was going to reshape all of humanity, reshape all of the world into a better, more utopian world where everyone was equal, you know, brotherhood and fraternity. And it didn't work out like that and in a sense, I think he's calling for a ring out a slowly dying cause. It's time for us to let that go. And ancient forms of party strife. So there's more important things in this party line. If you live in America today, you know what I mean these ancient forms of party strife. Everything today is left, right, democrat and Republican, right. We have this party strife. So again we're getting we're still in this political part of the poem Bring in the nobler modes of life.
Kirk:Nobler modes of life with sweeter manners, pure laws. Okay, he doesn't really say what the nobler modes of life are, so you're going to have to figure that out. What's nobler for you? I have my view of nobler. For me, being noble is being steadfast in your convictions, holding to what you believe, in, believing in romance and love and fighting for your values and staying convicted to your values in the midst of turmoil, chaos and all the things of the world that are thrown at you. You're going to have those happen to you, but staying the path, stay the course. That, to me, is what a nobler mode of life is with sweeter manners, pure laws. That's me, that's for you. He's not saying saying what it is. He's just saying ring in, bring this in these nobler modes of life Ring out the want, the care, the sin, the faithless coldness of the times. Yeah, I mean the faithless coldness of the times, the sin, the care, the ring out the want, the care. So there he's saying get rid of want, get rid of care, get rid of sin. Okay, I think that's. You know, it's one of those things where poets will say things like that. I'm like, okay, I think that sounds nice. I don't think you could just ring out the care and sin. But you know, nice, try, I'm with you, at least in spirit.
Kirk:Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, but ring the fuller minstrel in. So you know this kind of bard singer. So he's also. This is an interesting thing for him as a poet is he's saying I don't want to be writing only these mournful rhymes, I don't just want to be writing about sadness and death and loss and dealing with my psychological despair. I also want to write something else a fuller minstrel, a fuller bard. So that's an important one for you too.
Kirk:What is the rhymes of Tennyson? Were his thoughts. That was the pattern of his brain. What's your brain pattern? What's going on? What kind of modes of thought mournful rhymes are echoing and reverberating within your brain on a regular basis. Well, ring them out. It's the new year.
Kirk:Ring out false pride in place and blood. So not pride itself, but false pride in place and blood. So to me I hear a little bit of ring out this nationalism and tribalism and racism, the civic slander and the spite. So the stanza is 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. And of course he's a poet trying to evoke a certain feeling. He's not telling you what love of truth and right, what is truth? What is right? What is love? What is the common love of good Mean? He doesn't give that to you. I think a lot of people probably just have colloquial views of that. But there's a deeper philosophical question, of course, of where do those views that you have of truth and right and common love of good come from? That's important. He's a poet, not a philosopher. So we can give him break.
Kirk: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. So now we're getting this Christian view, I think, like ring out the false shapes of disease, ring out the narrowing lust of gold. So we're getting rid of some of these ideas and problems that the Bible is making promises that one day, during the rapture, we will all get to a better place. The years of war, the lust of gold, the foul disease will all disappear and we'll have a thousand year reign of peace. And then ring in the valiant man and free the larger heart, the kindlier man, ring out the darkness of the land, bring in the Christ. That is to be so. That's in memoriam. Ring out wild bells.
Kirk:I think it's a poem, again, that's worth reading on your own. Read it out loud, try it, read it to a friend and I would really recommend although I wouldn't recommend necessarily reading the whole poem out loud, but really recommend reading in memoriam by, in memoriam AHH, by Alfred Lord Tennyson and yes, it is very long. If you can read as much as you can out loud, I would do that or whisper it or whatever, but just I would recommend reading through that entire thing, thinking about it. It's a poem that's worthy of contemplation, especially since loss is part of life. It's part of the change. Things change, you lose something and hopefully you gain something, or you will gain something if you take the right actions.
Kirk:And I think the way that he processes his loss of his friend is a way that we all, in a sense, pattern our own loss, and there's a lot we can learn by the experience of going through him on his journey of dealing with the loss of his friend. So, on that note, on that happy note, I hope you will ring out the old and ring in the new. Bring in something positive, think about what you want. So the contemplation of the last couple of weeks, hopefully you've been doing that, and now it's time for something new, to ring in something. Have optimism and hope. That is the core meaning of this poem that, despite loss, despite going through some difficulty, despite not having achieved all the values that you've always wanted to achieve, despite not being where you want to be in your career, in your health, with your friendships, with your love life, have hope, believe, fight for the future and keep going forward. Be nowhere.