The turning of the calendar from one year to the next has always been a time for summing up past experience, bidding farewell to those we have lost, renewing old friendships, making plans and resolutions, and expressing our hopes for the future — all fit subjects for poems, like these classics on New Year’s themes:
- Robert Burns,
“Song—Auld Lang Syne” (1788)
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
“The Death of the Old Year” (1842)
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
“Ring Out, Wild Bells” (from In Memoriam A.H.H., 1849)
- Emily Dickinson,
“One Year ago — jots what?” (#296)
- Christina Rossetti,
“Old and New Year Ditties” (1862)
- Helen Hunt Jackson,
“New Year’s Morning” (1892)
- Thomas Hardy,
“The Darkling Thrush” (composed December 31, 1900, published 1902)
- John Clare,
“The Old Year” (1920)
