Eight beautiful New Year’s poems
Our edit of the best New Year poems, to celebrate New Year's Eve and welcome in the new year from 'Auld Lang Syne' to 'Ring Out, Wild Bells'.
To celebrate New Year's Eve and New Year's Day we've collected some of our favourite New Year poems, from famous poems such as 'Auld Lang Syne', to lesser-known works about welcoming in the new year.
If you love poetry, don't miss our edit of the best poetry books.
New Year
by Carol Ann Duffy
I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl
and let it fall. The urgent fireworks fling themselves
against the night, flowers of desire, love’s fervency.
Out of the space around me, standing here, I shape
your absent body against mine. You touch me as the giving air.
Most far, most near, your arms are darkness, holding me,
so I lean back, lip-read the heavens talking on in light,
syllabic stars. I see, at last, they pray at us. Your breath
is midnight’s, living, on my skin, across the miles between us,
fields and motorways and towns, the million lit-up little homes.
This love we have, grief in reverse, full rhyme, wrong place,
wrong time, sweet work for hands, the heart’s vocation, flares
to guide the new year in, the days and nights far out upon the sky’s
dark sea. Your mouth is snow now on my lips, cool, intimate, first kiss,
a vow. Time falls and falls through endless space, to when we are.
This was the year that was not the year
By Brian Bilston
This was the year that was not the year
I repaired the bathroom tap
and emptied out the kitchen drawer
of a lifetime’s worth of crap.
This was the year that was not the year
in which I launched a new career.
516 A West End hit eluded me
as did Time Person of the Year.
This was the year that was not the year
I became a household name.
Action figures were not sold of me.
I wasn’t made a dame.
This was the year that was not the year
I spent less time on my phone.
Nights of passion did not happen
in boutique hotels in Rome.
This was the year that was the year
I didn’t get that much done –
much the same as the year before,
much like the one to come.
From Days Like These
Days Like These
by Brian Bilston
Days Like These will take the blues out of Monday, flatten the Wednesday hump, and amplify that Friday feeling. In this playful, innovative collection, Brian Bilston writes a poem to accompany every day of the year. Each poem is inspired by a significant – often curious – event associated with that day: from Open an Umbrella Indoors Day to the day on which New York banned public flirting; from the launch of the Rubik’s Cube to the first appearance of the phrase, ‘the best thing since sliced bread’.
The Year
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of a year.
From A Poem for Every Winter Day
A Poem for Every Winter Day
by Allie Esiri
This beautiful collection is full of verses that will transport you to sparkling winter scenes, with poems for Christmas, New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day. The poems are selected from Allie Esiri’s bestselling poetry anthologies A Poem for Every Day of the Year and A Poem for Every Night of the Year, including poems by Mary Oliver, Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Hardy, E. E. Cummings, Robert Burns, Joseph Coelho, George the Poet, Benjamin Zephaniah and Jackie Kay.
Auld Lang Syne
By Robert Burns
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
Sin’ auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne.
And there’s a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
From A Poem for Every Night of the Year
A Poem for Every Night of the Year
by Allie Esiri
Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, this is a magnificent collection of 366 poems compiled by Allie Esiri, one for every night of the year. It contains a full spectrum of poetry from familiar favourites to exciting contemporary voices. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, W. B. Yeats, A. A. Milne and Christina Rossetti sit alongside Roger McGough, Carol Ann Duffy and Benjamin Zephaniah.
Good Riddance, But Now What?
By Ogden Nash
Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.
From Read Me 2: A Poem For Every Day Of The Year
Read Me 2: A Poem For Every Day of the Year
by Gaby Morgan
This beautiful collection containsa poem for every day of the year from the very best classic and modern poets. From poets including W. H. Auden, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus Heaney, Dylan Thomas, W. B. Yeats, Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, Roald Dahl, Charles Causley, Eleanor Farjeon, Philip Larkin and many more.
Ring Out, Wild Bells (from In Memoriam)
By Lord Alfred Tennyson
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.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
From A Poem For Every Day Of The Year
A Poem for Every Day of the Year
by Allie Esiri
Reflecting the changing seasons and linking to events on key dates – funny for April Fool's Day, festive for Christmas – these poems are thoughtful, inspiring, humbling, informative, quiet, loud, small, epic, peaceful, energetic, upbeat, motivating, and empowering! The collection includes 366 poems, one for sharing on every day of the year.
Promise
By Jackie Kay
Remember, the time of year
when the future appears
like a blank sheet of paper
a clean calendar, a new chance.
On thick white snow
You vow fresh footprints
then watch them go
with the wind’s hearty gust.
Fill your glass. Here’s tae us. Promises
made to be broken, made to last.
From A Poem For Every Day Of The Year
Poem for a New Year
By Matt Goodfellow
Something’s moving in,
I hear the weather in the wind,
sense the tension of a sheep-field
and the pilgrimage of fins.
Something’s not the same,
I taste the sap and feel the grain,
hear the rolling of the rowan
ringing, singing in a change.
Something’s set to start,
there’s meadow-music in the dark
and the clouds that shroud the mountain
slowly, softly start to part.
From A Poem For Every Day Of The Year
The New Year
By Anon.
I am the little New Year, ho, ho !
Here I come tripping it over the snow.
Shaking my bells with a merry din –
So open your doors and let me in!
Presents I bring for each and all –
Big folks, little folks, short and tall;
Each one from me a treasure may win –
So open your doors and let me in!
Some shall have silver and some shall have gold,
Some shall have new clothes and some shall have old;
Some shall have brass and some shall have tin –
So open your doors and let me in!
Some shall have water and some shall have milk,
Some shall have satin and some shall have silk!
But each from me a present may win –
So open your doors and let me in!
From Read Me 2: A Poem For Every Day Of The Year