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.]

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.

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!

Bells call others, but themselves enter not into the Church.

Bells call others, but themselves enter not into the Church.

While the steeples are loud in their joy,
To the tune of the bells' ring-a-ding,
Let us read more

While the steeples are loud in their joy,
To the tune of the bells' ring-a-ding,
Let us chime in a peal, one and all,
For we all should be able to sing Hullah baloo.

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.

These bells have been anointed,
And baptized with holy water!

These bells have been anointed,
And baptized with holy water!

Then get thee gone and dig my grave thyself,
And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear
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Then get thee gone and dig my grave thyself,
And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear
That thou are crowned, not that I am dead.

I call the Living--I mourn the Dead--
I break the Lightning.

I call the Living--I mourn the Dead--
I break the Lightning.