It is these concerns of the day that turn us to poets and philosophers to define the importance of the coming of any new year: Housman reflected on the "beauty of the death-struck year." Emerson told us the "years teach what the days never know." In the 19th century Charles Lamb wrote: "No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference." And Tennyson took special note of the new year when he was poet laureate of England in 1850: "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."