Poems for New Year's Eve

Robert Burns

If you’re like most people, you can’t name a poem written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. If you can, I salute you and recommend you get out more often. Burns wrote in the eighteenth century and is probably most well known for something a lot of people don’t realize he did. According to the website Burns Country, Burns wrote in a letter to an acquaintance, "There is an old song and tune which has often thrilled through my soul. You know I am an enthusiast in old Scotch songs. I shall give you the verses on the other sheet... Light be the turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment! There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half a dozen of modern English Bacchanalians."

The song Burns spoke of was Auld Lang Syne, an ancient tune which is still sung at parties around the world to ring in the New Year. It’s impossible to say with certainty who wrote the original lyrics and its history is all but certain, Burns is generally credited with penning at least two stanzas of the version we’re familiar us:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne!

(Chorus)

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne.

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

Thomas Hardy

The popular tune Auld Lang Syne connects Burns (if only in a Five Degrees of Kevin Bacon way) to the English poet Thomas Hardy. Hardy was born June 2, 1840, in the village of Upper Bockhampton, in Southwestern England. By the end of the 19^th century, Hardy had established himself as a poet and taken residence in Dorchester where the ancient Scottish New Year’s Eve tune surely floated on the chilly wind as the old century came to an end and humanity rushed forward into the 1900’s.

On December 30, 1900 (the date that in Hardy’s mind marked the end of the 19^th century) Hardy wrote his poem, The Darkling Thrush. The somber poem reflects a darker image of the beginning of the age of ragtime and jazz than we’re used to.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

In Brittan New Years has a direct connection with poetry. For centuries the resident British Poet Laureate has been charged with the grand task of writing a poem to ring in the New Year. The tradition was established by Laureate Nahum Tate who penned eight New Year odes between 1693 and 1708. In fact, we owe the phrase "ring out the old, ring in the new" to Laureate Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem, In Memoriam:

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.

 

That's a lot of poetry information for one day, but I think it's important to avoid myopically focusing on the west and it's poetic links with the turning year. Japanese poet and Buddhist priest, Kobayashi Issa, authored a pair of lovely haiku on the subject:

Kobayashi Issa

New Year’s Day

New Year's Day--

everything is in blossom!

I feel about average.

New Year’s Morning

New Year's morning:

the ducks on the pond

quack and quack.

Coleman Barks

I know I should dedicate more time to the subject of New Year's poetry, but I'd be here until next New Year's Eve and I'd still fail to do the subject justice. I wanted to close out with a modern American poet, something a little more accessible before heading off to celebrate the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013.

New Year's Day Nap

by Coleman Barks

Fiesta Bowl on low.

My son lying here on the couch

on the "Dad" pillow he made for me

in the Seventh Grade. Now a sophomore

at Georgia Southern, driving back later today,

he sleeps with his white top hat over his face.

I'm a dancin' fool.

Twenty years ago, half the form

he sleeps within came out of nowhere

with a million micro-lemmings who all died but one

piercer of membrane, specially picked to start a brainmaking,

egg-drop soup, that stirred two sun and moon centers

for a new-painted sky in the tiniest

ballroom imaginable.

Now he's rousing, six feet long,

turning on his side. Now he's gone.