Ring out the old, ring in the new
Ring out the old, ring in the new. Alfred Tennyson* (1809-1892).
This is a variant from Section 106 of In Memoriam A.H.H., the poem written over sixteen years in memory of Tennyson’s great friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died in 1833. This section dates from 1845-46. More commonly in hymnals, a fuller selection of stanzas from this Section is found, beginning as a hymn with its first stanza, beginning ‘Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky’*.
Presumably not liking the wildness of stanza 1, the compilers of a number of hymnals preferred to begin with stanza 2, which goes to the core of the poem with lines 1 and 4 (‘old...new’; ‘false...true’). For the full text, see the entry on ‘Ring out,...
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MLA style (see MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, 3rd Ed.)
. "Ring out the old, ring in the new."
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press. Web. 25 Jan. 2026.<
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/r/ring-out-the-old,-ring-in-the-new>.
Chicago style (see The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Ed.)
. "Ring out the old, ring in the new."
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press, accessed January 25, 2026,
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/r/ring-out-the-old,-ring-in-the-new.