by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

The year 2017 has been a difficult one for many people. The increasing effects of global climate change have taken lives and destroyed homes. More people, especially children, are hungry, or waiting in a refugee camp for the chance of a new life in some country far from their war-ravaged or drought-stricken homelands.

Those of us in the United States who hoped it would be the first year of an American woman president have been bitterly disappointed by the inauguration instead of a man who stands for everything we despise, and have worked so hard to change about our society.

But 2017 is almost over. In a few days, it will be 2018. As Ranier Maria Rilke urges us:

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us,
new, untouched, full of things that have never been.”

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In 1788, Robert Burns (1759-1796) wrote the most famous poem for New Year’s Eve in the world, Auld Lang Syne. It became a song, and its first verse and chorus are now sung all around the world to bid farewell to the old year, and welcome in a new one.  But many people are unsure what the words they are singing mean, and even fewer know all the verses of the poem.

So click here for the whole poem/song, with the verses in the original Scots poem and the lyrics in English translation of the song:

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