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.
–From “Ring out, Wild Bells,” part of In Memoriam, Tennyson’s elegy to Arthur Henry Hallam, 1850
This was in the bulletin of Church of the Cross in Ticonderoga, New York yesterday, which brought it to mind for posting.
How striking it is to read this poem in light of Henry Jaffa’s review of the new edition of the “Nichomachean Ethics”! Can there be “love of truth and right…common love of good” in the era of deconstructionism?