O curfew of the setting sun! O Bells of Lynn!
O requiem of the dying day! O Bells of Lynn!
From the dark belfries of yon cloud-cathedral wafted,
Your sounds aerial seem to float, O Bells of Lynn!
Borne on the evening wind across the crimson twilight,
O’er land and sea they rise and fall, O Bells of Lynn!
The fisherman in his boat, far out...
I
hear the sledges with the bells,
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping...
From the near city comes the clang of bells:
Their hundred jarring diverse tones combine
In one faint misty harmony, as fine
As the soft note yon winter robin swells.
What if to Thee in thine infinity
These multiform and many-colored creeds
Seem but the robe man wraps as masquers’ weeds
Round the one living truth them givest him—Thee?...
Those evening bells! those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells
Of youth, and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime!
Those joyous hours are passed away;
And many a heart that then was gay
Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
And hears no more those evening bells.
And so ’t will be when I am...
HEAR the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight,—
Keeping time, time, time,
...
Sabbata pango;
Funera plango;
Solemnia clango.
—Inscription on an Old Bell.
WITH deep affection
And recollection
I often think on
Those Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would,
In the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle
Their magic spells.
On this I ponder
Where’er I wander...
From “The Lay of St. Aloy’s”
LOUD and clear
From the Saint Nicholas tower, on the listening ear,
With solemn swell,
The deep-toned bell
Flings to the gale a funeral knell;
And hark—at its sound,
As a cunning old hound,
When he opens, at once causes all the young whelps...
As Sleigh Bells seem in summer
Or Bees, at Christmas show —
So fairy — so fictitious
The individuals do
Repealed from observation —
A Party that we knew —
More distant in an instant
Than Dawn in Timbuctoo.
How still the Bells in Steeples stand
Till swollen with the Sky
They leap upon their silver Feet
In frantic Melody!
When Bells stop ringing — Church — begins
The Positive — of Bells —
When Cogs — stop — that's Circumference —
The Ultimate — of Wheels.
