Beginnn* (for Beginning, etc.)

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.

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.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Ring Out, Wild Bells” is often paraphrased on this day when the old year is ending and a new one just beginning. And so we will ring out 2010 with the moderate-probability typo Beginnn* and look forward to a whole new selection when we return next year.

(New Year’s Eve fireworks in Paris, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak