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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.]
And this be the vocation fit,
For which the founder fashioned it;
High, high above earth's life, read more
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!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows,
Now read more
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason
Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh,
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy.
Ring out, will bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light.
Ring out, will bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light.
Those evening bells! those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells!
Those evening bells! those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells!
The Bell never rings of itself; unless some one handles or moves
it it is dumb.
[Lat., Nunquam read more
The Bell never rings of itself; unless some one handles or moves
it it is dumb.
[Lat., Nunquam aedepol temere tinniit tintinnabulum;
Nisi quis illud tractat aut movet, mutum est, tacet.]
How like the leper, with his own sad cry
Enforcing his own solitude, it tolls!
That lonely read more
How like the leper, with his own sad cry
Enforcing his own solitude, it tolls!
That lonely bell set in the rushing shoals,
To warn us from the place of jeopardy!
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.
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.