Obiit MDCCCXXXIII, CII–CVIII

The time draws near the birth of Christ; The moon is hid, the night is still; A single church below the hill Is pealing, folded in the mist.

A single peal of bells below, That wakens at this hour of rest A single murmur in the breast, That these are not the bells I know.

Like strangers’ voices here they sound, In lands where not a memory strays, Nor landmark breathes of other days, But all is new unhallow’d ground.

This holly by the cottage-eave, To night, ungather’d, shall it stand: We live within the stranger’s land, And strangely falls our Christmas eve.

Our father’s dust is left alone And silent under other snows: There in due time the woodbine blows, The violet comes, but we are gone.

No more shall wayward grief abuse The genial hour with mask and mime; For change of place, like growth of time, Has broke the bond of dying use.

Let cares that petty shadows cast, By which our lives are chiefly proved, A little spare the night I loved, And hold it solemn to the past.

But let no footstep beat the floor, Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm; For who would keep an ancient form Through which the spirit breathes no more?

Be neither song, nor game, nor feast, Nor harp be touch’d, nor flute be blown; No dance, no motion, save alone What lightens in the lucid east

Of rising worlds by yonder wood. Long sleeps the summer in the seed; Run out your measur’d arcs, and lead The closing cycle rich in good.

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.

It is the day when he was born, A bitter day that early sank Behind a purple-frosty bank Of vapour, leaving night forlorn.

The time admits not flowers or leaves To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies The blast of North and East, and ice Makes daggers at the sharpen’d eaves,

And bristles all the brakes and thorns To yon hard crescent, as she hangs Above the wood which grides and clangs Its leafless ribs and iron horns

Together, in the drifts that pass, To darken on the rolling brine That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine, Arrange the board and brim the glass;

Bring in great logs and let them lie, To make a solid core of heat; Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat Of all things ev’n as he were by:

We keep the day. With festal cheer, With books and music, surely we Will drink to him whate’er he be, And sing the songs he loved to hear.

I will not shut me from my kind, And, lest I stiffen into stone, I will not eat my heart alone, Nor feed with sighs a passing wind:

What profit lies in barren faith, And vacant yearning, tho’ with might To scale the heaven’s highest height, Or dive below the wells of Death?

What find I in the highest place, But mine own phantom chanting hymns? And on the depths of death there swims The reflex of a human face.

I’ll rather take what fruit may be Of sorrow under human skies: ’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise, Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.

Heart-affluence in discursive talk From household fountains never dry; The critic clearness of an eye, That saw thro’ all the Muses’ walk;

Seraphic intellect and force To seize and throw the doubts of man; Impassion’d logic, which outran The hearer in its fiery course;

High nature amorous of the good, But touch’d with no ascetic gloom; And passion pure in snowy bloom Thro’ all the years of April blood;

A love of freedom rarely felt, Of freedom in her regal seat Of England, not the schoolboy heat, The blind hysterics of the Celt;

And manhood fused with female grace In such a sort, the child would twine, A trustful hand, unasked, in thine, And find his comfort in thy face;

All these have been, and thee mine eyes Have look’d on: if they look’d in vain My shame is greater who remain, Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.

Thy converse drew us with delight, The men of rathe and riper years: The feeble soul, a haunt of fears, Forgot his weakness in thy sight.

On thee the loyal-hearted hung, The proud was half disarm’d of pride, Nor cared the serpent at thy side To flicker with his treble tongue.

The stern were mild when thou wert by, The flippant put himself to school And heard thee, and the brazen fool Was soften’d, and he knew not why;

While I, thy dearest, sat apart, And felt thy triumph was as mine; And loved them more, that they were thine, The graceful tact, the Christian art;

Not mine the sweetness or the skill, But mine the love that will not tire, And, born of love, the vague desire That spurs an imitative will.