And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side In her tomb by the sounding sea. XV It was his theory of poetry, in which he the supremest. Her death is the saddest loss and therefore the most poetical topic in the world. He would treat this musically by application of the refrain, increasing the sorrowful loveliness of his poem by the contrast of something homely, fantastic, and quaint. Almost his only exception to this theory is "The Bells". It was written not How "The Bells" was written 25 long before his death, when he seemed little more than a wreck. He was visiting a lady friend, who persuaded him to drink tea in a conservatory whose open windows admitted the sound of church bells, and begged him to write something; but he declined saying: "I so dislike the sound of the bells tonight I cannot write. I have no subject-I am exhausted.” His friend wrote the title, "The Bells, by E. A. Poe," and underneath, "The bells; the little silver bells!" and asked him to finish the stanza. he had done so she wrote, "The heavy iron bells ;" When and he also finished that stanza, and so wrote the poem, his friend writing the first line of each stanza1. He afterwards elaborated it after his fashion, and as finally published it is in itself perhaps the most pleasing of all his poems. "We can never read it without pausing after every verse to let the peals of sound die away on the bosom of the palpitating air, that we may commence the succeeding stanza in silence." XVI THE BELLS I Hear the sledges with the bells- What a world of merriment their melody foretells! While the stars that oversprinkle Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells ! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon ! The Bells 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 bells, bells, bells, bells, To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells. III* Hear the loud alarum bells Brazen bells! 27 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 "I was astonished one night in watching a conflagration, and repeating, amid the clash and clang of the alarm-bells, the third stanza of the poem, to find how marvellously the movement of the verse timed with the peals of sound, and how truly the poem reproduced the sense of danger which the sound of the bells, and the glare and mad ascension of the flames, and the pallor of the moonlight conveyed. All the poetry of a conflagration is in that stanza, both in sound and sense, and Dante himself could not have rendered it more truly "." Leaping higher, higher, higher, And a resolute endeavor By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells How they clang and clash, and roar. 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! IV Hear the tolling of the bells Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody com pels ! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright, |