Wild Bells

It's more a case of fireworks than full-circle bell ringing these days, but the bells of imagination and memory still ring out every New Year's Eve. It's widely believed that Tennyson was inspired by the bells of the abbey church at Waltham Abbey when he wrote these lines, but I like to think he was remembering earlier New Years in the Lincolnshire Wolds, with the bells of Somersby and all the churches around – Bag Enderby, Harrington, Salmonby, Tetford, Ashby Puerorum – ringing out. Either way, as a New Year poem this surely can't be bettered... 

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 Turn of the Year

The last day of the old year, and the anniversary of the birth (in 1869) of Henri Matisse. A reproduction of this painting of goldfish, from 1912, hung on the main corridor of my old grammar school and it is almost certainly the first Matisse I noticed. I've loved his work ever since, and my opinion of him as an artist has only risen (whereas my opinion of Picasso has fallen steeply – the great Matisse Picasso exhibition of 2003 for me only confirmed the former's superior greatness).

From the sublime to the ridiculous – this morning Radio 4's Woman's Hour was devoted to an impeccably 'diverse' panel of right-on ultraliberal feminists talking among themselves on the theme of 'Books that Changed Your Mind'. The title could hardly have been more ludicrously inappropriate, as they talked only about books that endorsed and amplified their view of the world in handy book form – books, moreover, that had almost all been published in the past few decades. It was only when the discussion was opened up to listeners that a more interesting and diverse range of titles started to emerge (though 'interesting' is pushing it). I listened aghast and numbly appalled, as I so often do at this time of year, what with Today's 'guest editors' and the endless ignorant reworking of classic material to conform to the BBC's all-conquering world view. Thanks heavens Radio 3 endures.

But enough of all this – it's the end of another year that has been, for me, full of blessings and pleasures. There have been many changes of scene – New Zealand, the Mani, Normandy, Brittany, Edinburgh, Venice, and countless richly rewarding journeys into deepest England in pursuit of my researches (the book is on schedule for completion next year). The summer was one long heatwave, resulting in the most amazing butterfly season in years. I discovered more fine books (of which more later perhaps), poems and music, and enjoyed many great paintings and much great architecture. And the year ended in abundant joy with the birth of a new grandson and the arrival of our daughter and family from the Antipodes. So much to be thankful for – and thankful I am.
Happy new year, everybody!

Unfinished?

On this day in 1953, Philip Larkin signed off on an intriguing 'unfinished' poem, Negative Indicative. It is well named, as everything indicative (or descriptive) in it is framed as negative, as something that is never going to happen, to be experienced, or has never happened – though from the vividness of the notation, it clearly has, all of it. Perhaps it is another of Larkin's appalled confrontations with death, the ultimate 'never again'. None of this will ever happen again. At least it ends with a beautiful moment, something that might almost seem affirmative. Where would Larkin have gone, I wonder, with that 'emblematic sound of water'?


Never to walk from the station's lamps and laurels
Carrying my father's lean old leather case
Crumbling like the register at the hotel;
Never to be shown upstairs

To a plain room smelling of soap, a towel
Neatly hung on the back of a rush chair,
The floor uneven, the grate choked with a frill,
Muslin curtains hiding the market square;

Never to visit the lame girl who lives three doors
Down Meeting-House Lane — 'This pile is ready; these
I shall finish tonight, with luck' — to watch, as she pours
Tea from a gold-lined jubilee pot, her eyes,

Her intelligent face; never, walking away
As light fails, to notice the first star
Pulsing alone in a long shell-coloured sky,
And remember the year has turned, and feel the air

Alive with the emblematic sound of water —

In the Anglican Sunset

Among my Christmas presents was an excellent anthology, Building Jerusalem: Elegies on Parish Churches, a selection of church poems written in the long shadows cast over England by the Anglican sunset. In it I found today's Christmastide poem, by the one and only Geoffrey Hill...

Epiphany at Saint Mary and All Saints

The wise men, vulnerable in ageing plaster,
are borne as gifts
to be set down among the other treasures
in their familial strangeness, mystery's toys.

Below the church the Stour slovens
through its narrow cut.
On service roads the lights cast amber salt
slatted with a thin rain doubling as snow.

Showings are not unknown: a six-winged seraph
somewhere impends – it is the geste of invention,
not the creative but the creator spirit.
The night air sings a colder spell to come.


[This St Mary and All Saints is the grand parish church of Kidderminster, the largest in Worcestershire.]

Christmas Day

Wishing a merry Christmas to all who graze in these pastures.
There's already been much jollity here, what with our beloved daughter's fortieth birthday (incredible, isn't it?) yesterday. And more to come today...
God bless us, every one.

Christmas Eve

Here's a poem for the day – a sonnet of sorts, offering a distinctive take on the Magnum Mysterium – by the great R.S. Thomas.

Nativity

Christmas Eve! Five
hundred poets waited, pen
poised above paper,
for the poem to arrive,
bells ringing. It was because
the chimney was too small,
because they had ceased
to believe, the poem passed them
by on its way out
into oblivion, leaving
the doorstep bare
of all but the sky-rhyming
child to whom later
on they would teach prose.

Blogging Note

The good news is that our lovely daughter and son-in-law and our adorable grandsons arrived in the UK today and will be here for Christmas and much of January. The bad news (well, maybe not that bad) is that I'll probably be doing rather less blogging for a while. But never fear (?hope), I shall not be falling silent.