Ring Out, Wild Bells: Meaning, History, and Theology
"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky"
- Written
- 1850
- Category
- Hymn
- Status
- Verified
- Rights
- Public domain
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Story
Ring Out, Wild Bells is a New Year hymn drawn from Alfred Tennyson's 1850 elegy In Memoriam A.H.H. Often sung to Joseph Barnby's tune JORDAN, it turns the passing year into a prayer for truth, peace, justice, generous love, and renewed life under Christ.
Overview
Ring Out, Wild Bells is a New Year hymn drawn from Alfred Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. The sound of bells at the turning of the year becomes an extended call to leave behind grief, falsehood, social hostility, pride, greed, violence, and darkness, while welcoming truth, justice, peace, courage, generosity, and a larger love.
The hymn's movement is both personal and public. It begins with the passing year, remembers people who are no longer present, and then widens into a moral vision for society. Its closing appeal to "the Christ that is to be" has made the poem especially adaptable to Christian worship, where it can be heard as a longing for the character and reign of Christ to be more fully visible in human life.
It is particularly suited to New Year, watchnight, covenant-renewal, peace, and justice services. Because Tennyson wrote a poetic elegy rather than a conventional doctrinal hymn, its strongest worship use comes when its images are allowed to lead the congregation toward repentance, hope, reconciliation, and renewed commitment.
Historical Background
Alfred Tennyson's "Ring Out, Wild Bells" comes from In Memoriam A.H.H., the long elegy written in response to the death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833. Tennyson worked on the larger poem over many years, and it was published in 1850, the same year he became Poet Laureate. Within In Memoriam, the bell passage marks a New Year movement from private grief toward wider hopes for moral and social renewal. A later local tradition connects the "wild bells" with Waltham Abbey, but the story is not established securely enough in the primary evidence to serve as the documented origin of the poem.
The original section contains eight four-line stanzas. Hymnal editors commonly made a shorter congregational text by selecting six of them and grouping the quatrains into three eight-line stanzas in long meter double. The represented HymnInfo text follows the public-domain form printed in the Episcopal Hymnal of 1916 with Joseph Barnby's JORDAN: the first two quatrains are retained, followed by the stanzas on grief and social division, truth and the common good, disease and war, and the final prayer for courage, kindness, light, and Christ. Two quatrains from Tennyson's full poem—those beginning "Ring out a slowly dying cause" and "Ring out the want, the care, the sin"—are not part of this selected hymnal version.
JORDAN was not written for Tennyson's poem. Barnby published the tune in The Hymnary in 1872 for "Sing to the Lord a Joyful Song," and editors later found its 8.8.8.8.D structure suitable for the selected Tennyson text. The hymn has also appeared with other melodies, including WALTHAM by John Baptiste Calkin, HALLEY by F. Agnes Johnston, an original setting by William Wallace Gilchrist, DEVENTER by Berthold Tours, LAUDS by Richard Redhead, WILD BELLS by Henry Lahee, and the tune now attributed to Wenzel Müller that older hymnals often labeled MOZART or NOTTINGHAM. Crawford Gates supplied a later copyrighted setting for an abridged form of the poem.
Tennyson's 1850 text is public domain in the United States, and his death in 1892 places the text beyond the general life-plus-fifty-year term used for literary works in the Philippines. That textual status does not automatically apply to every later musical arrangement or edition; modern settings and harmonizations must be evaluated separately.
Biblical Foundations
Tennyson's poem is not a paraphrase of a particular biblical passage, so its Scripture connections are best understood as theological readings for Christian worship rather than claims about the poet's direct source. The language of ringing out the old and welcoming the new resonates strongly with 2 Corinthians 5:17, where life in Christ is described as new creation, and with Ephesians 4:22-24, which calls believers to put away the old way of life and put on the new person created in righteousness and truth.
Romans 12:2 deepens that theme by placing renewal in the transformation of the mind rather than in a mere change of calendar. The hymn's repeated petitions for truth, a larger heart, and the common good can therefore be heard as calls to moral conversion as well as social hope.
The public petitions for an end to war and injustice also have clear biblical parallels. Isaiah 2:4 imagines nations turning weapons into tools of cultivation and ceasing to learn war, while Micah 6:8 joins justice, mercy, and humble walking with God. Revelation 21:5 supplies an explicitly eschatological horizon for Christian use of the hymn: the final renewal of creation rests in God's promise, "Behold, I am making all things new."
Verse Explanation
Stanza 1 joins the death of the old year with a moral contrast between falsehood and truth. The bells do more than announce midnight: they become a summons to release what has passed and to welcome what is worthy of the new.
Stanza 2 moves from private grief into public life. It remembers those who are no longer seen, then names divisions between rich and poor, inherited pride, slander, and spite. Against these, the stanza asks for redress, truth, right, and a shared love of the good.
Stanza 3 expands the prayer still further. Disease, greed, and war are set against peace, courage, freedom, generosity, and kindness. The final contrast between darkness and "the Christ that is to be" gives Christian worshipers a culminating image of a world in which the life and reign of Christ are more fully reflected.
Theological Reflection
Ring Out, Wild Bells turns the New Year into an examination of what should die and what should be renewed. For Christian worship, this readily connects with repentance and sanctification: falsehood, pride, hostility, greed, and violence are not simply unfortunate features of society but realities from which believers and communities are called to turn.
The poem also refuses to separate personal sorrow from public righteousness. Grief over those no longer present stands beside the feud of rich and poor, civic slander, social pride, disease, and war. This breadth gives the hymn a form of social holiness: the desired renewal includes both the inner life and the structures and habits by which people live together.
The final phrase, "the Christ that is to be," should not be forced into a claim that Christ himself is incomplete or nonexistent. Within the poem's moral movement, it can be sung as a longing for Christ's truth, peace, courage, generosity, and love to become more fully manifest in the world. Christian congregations may therefore hear the line in the light of God's kingdom and the promised renewal of creation while recognizing that Tennyson's language is poetic rather than a formal doctrinal statement.
Church Impact
Hymnary documents "Ring Out, Wild Bells" in more than one hundred hymnals, showing substantial circulation as a New Year and special-occasion text. It has appeared in Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Mennonite, and other English-language collections, often in shortened forms suited to congregational singing.
Its many musical pairings also show that no single tune has monopolized the text. JORDAN became a durable choice, but WALTHAM, HALLEY, WILD BELLS, LAUDS, NOTTINGHAM, and other settings allowed editors to adapt the poem to different denominational and musical contexts.
The hymn's continuing usefulness lies in its unusual combination of mourning, social conscience, and hope. At the turn of the year it gives congregations language not only for remembering the past but also for praying about truth, peace, justice, generosity, and the more faithful embodiment of Christ's way in the future.
Musical Notes
JORDAN, composed by Joseph Barnby and published in The Hymnary in 1872, is an 8.8.8.8.D tune that became one of the best-established congregational settings for the selected hymn text. Barnby originally wrote it for "Sing to the Lord a Joyful Song," so its association with Tennyson is a later pairing rather than the poem's original musical form. Hymnary notes repeated melodic and rhythmic phrases in JORDAN and records Barnby's original plan for harmony with selected phrases in unison.
The text has a notably diverse tune history. Documented settings include WALTHAM by John Baptiste Calkin, HALLEY by F. Agnes Johnston, a 1902 setting by William Wallace Gilchrist, DEVENTER by Berthold Tours, LAUDS by Richard Redhead, and WILD BELLS by Henry Lahee. Older hymnals also used a melody frequently labeled MOZART or NOTTINGHAM; current hymnological authority attributes that tune to Wenzel Müller rather than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A later tune by Crawford Gates, copyrighted in 1948, accompanies an abridged and repeated version of the text in the 1985 Latter-day Saint hymnal. An anonymous melody from the 1753 Grenoble Antiphoner, DEUS TUORUM MILITUM, also appears among historical pairings and has no named composer to register.
These melodies are separate settings and should not be blended into a single arrangement. Targeted chord research for the represented JORDAN setting located public-domain scores and modern arrangements but no inspected reusable source that explicitly supplied chord symbols with reliable word-level placement. Accordingly, the public-domain lyrics are presented without newly created or transcribed ChordPro chords.
Application
- Use the hymn at New Year or watchnight services as a prayer for repentance, renewal, and hope.
- Invite worshipers to identify both personal habits and social patterns that should be "rung out" in the light of the gospel.
- Pair the hymn with prayer for truthful public speech, reconciliation across social divisions, peace among nations, and care for those who suffer.
- Use 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Ephesians 4:22-24 to distinguish Christian renewal from mere New Year optimism or self-improvement.
- Let the final stanza lead into commitment to a larger heart, a kindlier hand, and a life in which the character of Christ becomes more visible.
Discussion Questions
- What does the hymn ask to be left behind, and what does it ask to be welcomed in its place?
- How does the poem's origin in In Memoriam A.H.H. deepen its references to grief and the passing of time?
- Which petitions concern personal renewal, and which concern public or social life?
- How do 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Ephesians 4:22-24 help Christians interpret the contrast between the old and the new?
- How can the closing phrase about Christ be sung faithfully without treating Tennyson's poetic language as a complete doctrinal statement?
Teaching Tips
- Introduce the text as a selected passage from Tennyson's In Memoriam rather than as a poem originally written as a congregational hymn.
- Show learners that the represented hymnal version uses six of the original eight quatrains and groups them into three long-meter-double stanzas.
- Read 2 Corinthians 5:17 or Ephesians 4:22-24 before singing to give the old-and-new imagery a clear biblical frame.
- Ask the congregation to notice how the petitions widen from the passing year and private grief to social division, truth, peace, generosity, and Christlike renewal.
- When teaching the music, identify the actual tune being used; JORDAN is only one of several historical settings, and its harmony should not be mixed with material from another tune.
Sources
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Project Gutenberg — In Memoriam, first-edition text published by Edward Moxon in 1850
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Academy of American Poets — In Memoriam, Ring out, wild bells; full eight-quatrain public-domain text
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Hymnary.org — Ring Out, Wild Bells text authority, publication history, and tune associations
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Hymnary.org — The Hymnal 1916 no. 444; selected six-quatrain text with JORDAN
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Hymnary.org — JORDAN by Joseph Barnby; publication and tune notes
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Hymnary.org — Tune search for documented settings paired with Ring Out, Wild Bells
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Hymnary.org — WILD BELLS by Henry Lahee and hymn instances
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Hymnary.org — NOTTINGHAM, formerly attributed to Mozart, now attributed to Wenzel Müller
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Hymnary.org — LAUDS by Richard Redhead and Ring Out, Wild Bells instances
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Hymnary.org — HALLEY by F. Agnes Johnston, documented with Ring Out, Wild Bells
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Hymnary.org — William W. Gilchrist setting of Ring Out, Wild Bells
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BYU Library Special Collections — Crawford Gates biographical history and archival collection
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Hymnary.org — 1985 Latter-day Saint hymnal instance with Crawford Gates's copyrighted 1948 setting
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Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines — Copyright term guidance for literary and artistic works
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U.S. Copyright Office — Circular 15A, duration of copyright and public-domain cutoff for older published works
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World English Bible Classic — Scripture wording used in the record
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Chord research outcome: not_found — targeted searches for Ring Out, Wild Bells and Barnby's JORDAN found public-domain scores and modern arrangements, but no inspected reusable source with explicit chord symbols and reliable word-level placement.
Ring Out, Wild Bells Lyrics and Guitar Chords
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