This Advent and Christmas season, I’m especially drawn to Scripture and songs of longing. Longing for the world to be a better place. Longing for the end of pain and suffering for the countless who endure hardship. Longing for the fullness of God’s kingdom when all will be restored.

So, for my Advent article in Faith Today, I highlighted old favourites, like “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” and my newer favourite, “O Come, Divine Messiah.” Both celebrate the birth of Jesus and both long for his coming again:

O come, Desire of nations,
bind all peoples in one heart and mind.
Bid envy, strife and quarrels cease.
Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.
—”O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”

Oh come, Divine Messiah,
the world is longing for the day
when hope shall sing it’s triumph
and sadness flies away.
—”Oh Come Divine Messiah”

I’ve also been re-reading the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam (Ring Out, Wild Bells)” which starts “RIng out, wild bells, to the wild sky.” The line reminds me of the way Mark’s gospel begins the story of Jesus—not with angels or shepherds or the infant child born in a manger, but with John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness with his wild hair and wild clothing: “Prepare the way of the Lord” (Mark 1:1–8).

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” was published in 1850, but so much of the poem could have been written today:

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.

I love this version set to music by Canadian singer and songwriter Alana Levandoski. Then below I’ve re-printed the verses with a few notes that enrich my understanding of the song. I hope you’ll find those helpful too.

Ring Out, Wild Bells

From “In Memoriam” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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 him¹ 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,²
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.³

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.⁴

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,⁵
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Notes

¹At first, I found he distracting since the personification of the new year stopped with the pronoun. Why not use the more neutral it, so the emphasis would remain on the new year itself? Then I discovered that what I knew as “Wild Bells” was part of a longer poem “In Memoriam”—written by Tennyson in memory of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, a fellow poet who was also engaged to marry Tennyson’s sister, but he died suddenly of a brain hemmorhage at the age of twenty-two. With that background, the he is no longer a distraction to me here, but part of Tennyson remembering his friend.

²As Tennyson remembers his friend, both the he in the first verse and this reference to “those we see no more” remind me of my Dearheart too.

³Today, redress is often used in a more limited legal sense to mean monetary compensation for a wrong. But more broadly, the word means to set something right. Since the poem is in the public domain, I toyed with rephrasing the line as “Ring in healing humankind,” but I imagine Tennyson choosing redress with the r echoing ring, so I left his wording as is.

⁴A lovely image of Christ as “the fuller minstrel” who will fulfill all God’s promises of restoration and joy.

⁵Another image of Christ as “the valiant man and free” who is “the larger heart, the kindlier hand”—I would say the largest heart, the kindliest hand but that would lose the r sound that rings throughout Tennyson’s poem.

I’d love to add to my list of songs for this season that bring together the birth of Jesus and his coming again, so if you have songs to suggest or some other comment, please respond below.