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 tinkling of the bells.

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,

What a liquid ditty floats

To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon!

Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells!

How it dwells

On the Future! how it tells

Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Hear the loud alarum bells
Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,

By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar !
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,

By the twanging,

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling,

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells –

Of the bells

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

Hear the tolling of the bells

Iron bells!

What a world of solemn thought their monody compels !

In the silence of the night,

How we shiver with affright

At the melancholy menace of their tone!

For every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats

Is a groan.

And the people—ah, the people —
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,

And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor woman
They are neither brute nor human
They are Ghouls :

And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,

Rolls

A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells -
Of the bells:

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells

Of the bells, bells, bells

To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping, time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells,

In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells:

To the tolling of the bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

TO HELEN

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore.
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window niche

How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which. Are Holy-Land!

TO ONE IN PARADISE

Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine-

A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast !

A voice from out the Future cries, "On! on!" but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast!