"Ring Out, Wild Bells" Poem Analysis

Word list: Ring out, Ring in, Bells, Christ

By reading the title of the poem "Ring Out, Wild Bells" I imagine a medieval city in which they use bells to warn an incoming attack or invasion, so they wildly ring the bells, hence the title
interpretation.

The poem refers about all the wrongdoings, negative aspects of humanity and the horrible things. That we should get them out of our lives and to not to be corrupt, but instead to fill our lives with virtue, good deads and positivity.

In the poem it is implied that the world and its population is only filled with awful things, and we need to make a change for the best and just have innocence and purity in us. In a more simple words, the whole poem is about, out with the old and in with the new, which is explicity said in the fifth verse.

"Ring out the old, ring in the new,"

There are two verbs that are repeated a lot in the poem and also give the explanation to the meaning of the poem. One is "ring out" which it means to get out and the other one is "ring in" which means to let in in the context of the poem, so it means: Get out the old, let in the new. As previously mentioned, both "ring out" and "ring in" are used in almost all the verses, this is to show what we need to get rid of and what we need to be.
Also in the poem there is someone addressed as "he". In the fourth verse, first stanza:

"Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."

And in the seventh verse, second stanza:

"The year is going, let him go;"

This "he" represents Alfred Tennyson's friend, Arthur Hallam which died at a young age, and this verses are the dolefulness of his friend passing and he just wants him to go, to forget about his death that is causing so much sorrow. Furthermore, in this verses the bells could be the bells of a church that are ringing in the burial.

The tone of the poem is of regret, the speaker regrets how the world turned out and wants to make a change so everyone is in peace.

This poem only has one shift, the content doesn't change in the poem.

The theme of the poem is redemption, there is a need of erasing this world and starting again with a clean slate, but this time to fill it with only the positive and make it a divine or holy place where there is no war and no prejudice.

This poem is written in an iambic tetrameter. An unstressed, stressed type of feet with eight syllables in each verse which are separated in four meters. There is one exception in the verse 26:

"Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;"

Instead of eight syllables there are nine syllables.

The rhyme pattern used through out all the poem is ABBA as it can be seen in the first four verses:

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.

An ABBA rhyme pattern means that in each stanza the first verse rhymes with the fourth verse, and the second verse rhymes with the third verse. This goes for all the poem.

As for the literary devices, the most predominant and important one is anaphora, where a word or phrase is repeated at the beggining of a verse, this device is present in almost all the verses, when it repeats "ring out" and "ring in".
Another device present is metaphor, a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is given a more deep and implicit meaning, the most notable metaphors are in the first verse:

"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,"

This means to forget all the destruction and wild curves in the world. And in the sixth verse:

 "Ring, happy bells, across the snow:"

In the other hand this metaphor means the opposite, to start looking for all the goodness that makes us happy.

Finally, there is one allusion, where an literary work, place or event is referred to in the poem. This allusion is present in the last verse:

"Ring in the Christ that is to be."

Here the author refers to the coming of Jesus Christ and how he filled the world with hope and goodness, the author makes this allusion because of the recurring theme of looking into a bright and better future where someone can help make the world a better place.