Shadow and light both strove to be
The eight bell-ringers' company,
As with his gliding rope in hand,
Counting his changes, each did stand;
While rang and trembled every stone,
To music by the bell-mouths blown,
Till the bright clouds that towered on high
Seemed to re-echo cry with cry.
Still swang the clappers to and fro,
When, in the far-spread fields below,
I saw a ploughman with his team
Lift to the bells and fix on them
His distant eyes, as if he would
Drink in the utmost sound he could;
While near him sat his children three,
And in the green grass placidly
At six o'clock of an autumn dusk
With the sky in the west a rusty red,
The bells of the mission down in the valley
Cry out that the day is dead.
The first star pricks as sharp as steel--
Why am I suddenly so cold?
Three bells, each with a separate sound
Clang in the valley, wearily tolled.
Bells in Venice, bells at sea,
Bells in the valley heavy and slow--
There is no place over the crowded world
Where I can forget that the days go.
An old silver church in a forest
Is my love for you.
The trees around it
Are words that I have stolen from your heart.
An old silver bell, the last smile you gave,
Hangs at the top of my church.
It rings only when you come through the forest
And stand beside it.
And then, it has no need for ringing,
For your voice takes its place.
As I was going to town,
I saw a King and a Queen.
Such ringing of bells you never heard,
The clerks ran out of the stores;
You know how it was, Me alone.
I was standing as the others were,
“Oh! you little girl,” some one said,
“The King wants you,”
I became frightened
Wondering what he had to say,
Me alone.
Here’s what he wanted:
He wanted me to ride in his coach,
I felt myself so much riding in a King’s coach,
Me alone.
As I came down the Old York Road
Saint John's began to ring,
Across the Dead Folk in the grass,
The wide new dusk of spring.
Each window was a half-blown flower,
The pool beneath the hedge
Looked like a scrap of Tyrian gold
Dropped thinly in the sedge.
I think that never in the world
Blew there a tree so white
As the wild cherry by the wall,
So lonely to the sight.
As I came down the Old York Road
Not any soul was near,
Except two lovers going by
Within the fleet of year.
Out in the dim harbor
I hear the sound of bells:
Out on the gray-blue meadows of the sea,
I think mild water-cattle graze
Among the ripples.
The snow has ceased its fluttering flight,
The wind sunk to a whisper light,
An ominous stillness fills the night,
A pause--a hush.
At last, a sound that breaks the spell,
Loud, clanging mouthings of a bell,
That through the silence peal and swell,
And roll, and rush.
What does this brazen tongue declare,
That falling on the midnight air
Brings to my heart a sense of care
Akin to fright?
'Tis telling that the year is dead,
The New Year come, the Old Year fled,
Another leaf before me spread
On which to write.
A LONG, green swell
Slopes soft to the sea,
And a far-off bell
Swings sweet to me,
As the grey, chill day
Slips away from the lea.
Spread cold and far,
Without one glow
From a mild, pale star,
Is the sky's steel bow,
And the grey, chill day
Slips away below.
That green tree grieves
To the air around,
And the whispering leaves
Have a lonely sound,
I WOULD not lose the sense of mystery
That broods about our little lives and springs
Eternal from the unknown heart of things,
Nor miss by rude familiarity
Perception of the finer harmony
That underlies all dissonance and brings
The unseen to our consciousness and flings
A glory round our way continually.
For they alone shall win their happiness
Who still make room for things inscrutable;
And he who sees the greater in the less —
Who finds in folded leaf or purple bell
The Infinite — doth in himself possess
Some kinship with the daily miracle.
Sometimes when I am long alone
I wonder what is loneliness —
This silence like a deep bell's tone,
These moments, motionless?
This hush above the nervous street?
Removed as is the tree that stands,
Hill-high, with burrowing root-feet
And boughs like reaching hands.
As in my blood I feel life press.
Like sap into the frailest bough,
I think if such is loneliness
Then I am lonely now.
Brown BABY COBINA, with his large black velvet eyes,
His little coos of ecstacies, his gurgling of surprise,
With brass bells on his ankles, that laugh where’er he goes,
It’s so rare for bells to tinkle, above brown dimpled toes.
BROWN BABY COBINA is so precious that we fear
Something might come and steal him, when we grownups are not near;
So we tied bells on his ankles, and kissed on them this charm--
“Bells, guard our Baby Cobina from all devils and all harm.”
You are no more, but sunken in a sea
Sheer into dream, ten thousand leagues, you fell ;
And now you lie green-golden, while a bell
Swings with the tide, my heart : and all is well
Till I look down, and wavering, the spell —
Your loveliness — returns. There in the sea,
Where you lie amber-pale and coral-cool,
You are most loved, most lost, most beautiful.