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 following is of more direct bearing on the theme, and is moreover one of those charming pieces of domestic painting in which Tennyson excels.

    LXXXVII.

  Witch-elms that counterchange the floor
    Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright;
    And thou, with all thy breadth and height
  Of foliage, towering sycamore;

  How often, hither wandering down,
    My Arthur found your shadows fair. 
    And shook to all the liberal air
  The dust and din and steam of town: 

  He brought an eye for all he saw;
    He mixt in all our simple sports;
    They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts
  And dusky purlieus of the law.

  O joy to him in this retreat,
    Immantled in ambrosial dark,
    To drink the cooler air, and mark
  The landscape winking through the heat: 

  O sound to rout the brood of cares,
    The sweep of scythe in morning dew,
    The gust that round the garden flew,
  And tumbled half the mellowing pears!

  O bliss, when all in circle drawn
    About him, heart and ear were fed
    To hear him, as he lay and read
  The Tuscan poets on the lawn: 

  Or in the all-golden afternoon
    A guest, or happy sister, sung,
    Or here she brought the harp and flung
  A ballad to the brightening moon: 

  Nor less it pleased in livelier moods,
    Beyond the bounding hill to stray. 
    And break the livelong summer day
  With banquet in the distant woods;

  Whereat we glanced from theme to theme,
    Discuss’d the books to love or hate,
    Or touch’d the changes of the state,
  Or threaded some Socratic dream;

  But if I praised the busy town,
    He loved to rail against it still,
    For ‘ground’ in yonder social mill
  We rub each other’s angles down.