And this be the vocation fit,
For which the founder fashioned it;
High, high above earth's life, earth's labor
E'en to the heaven's blue vault to soar.
To hover as the thunder's neighbor,
The very firmament explore.
To be a voice as from above
Like yonder stars so bright and clear,
That praise their Maker as they move,
And usher in the circling year.
Tun'd be its metal mouth alone
To things eternal and sublime.
And as the swift wing'd hours speed on
May it record the flight of time!
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I call the Living--I mourn the Dead--
I break the Lightning.
I call the Living--I mourn the Dead--
I break the Lightning.
And the Sabbath bell,
That over wood and wild and mountain dell
Wanders so far, chasing all read more
And the Sabbath bell,
That over wood and wild and mountain dell
Wanders so far, chasing all thoughts unholy
With sounds most musical, most melancholy.
For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts read more
For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts of young and old.
Bells call others, but themselves enter not into the Church.
Bells call others, but themselves enter not into the Church.
The bells themselves are the best of preachers,
Their brazen lips are learned teachers,
From their pulpits read more
The bells themselves are the best of preachers,
Their brazen lips are learned teachers,
From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air,
Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw,
Shriller than trumpets under the Law,
Now a sermon and now a prayer.
The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard,
Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice
Of one, read more
The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard,
Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice
Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims
Tidings of good to Zion.
Dear bells! how sweet the sound of village bells
When on the undulating air they swim!
Dear bells! how sweet the sound of village bells
When on the undulating air they swim!
Hear the sledges with the bells,
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
read more
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,
In a sort of Runic rhyme
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
From the jingling and the tingling of the bells.
Hark, how chimes the passing bell!
There's no music to a knell;
All the other sounds we read more
Hark, how chimes the passing bell!
There's no music to a knell;
All the other sounds we hear,
Flatter, and but cheat our ear.
This doth put us still in mind
That our flesh must be resigned,
And, a general silence made,
The world be muffled in a shade.
[Orpheus' lute, as poets tell,
Was but moral of this bell,
And the captive soul was she,
Which they called Eurydice,
Rescued by our holy groan,
A loud echo to this tone.]
