UPFRONT December 26, 2005 Issue

'O blessings infinite!'

KIM SHIPPEY, SENIOR WRITER

A recent New Yorker cartoon showed two men in what looks like a repair shop discussing how they'd repair the world's woes. In the caption, one of them suggests they don't even think of the past. "I'd like to put the future behind us," he says.

What a contrast with the New Year's Eve cry of 19th-century English poet Alfred Tennyson: "Ring out the old, ring in the new ... / Ring out the false, ring in the true."

There's real despair in those cartoon characters; and real jubilation in those lines from "In Memoriam." And Tennyson doesn't hesitate to keep those bells ringing: "Ring in the love of truth and right, / Ring in the common love of good."

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