The Church Bells

The Viennese authorities have melted down the great bell in St. Stephen's to supply metal for guns or muntions. Every poor village has made a similar gift. - Lokal Anzeiger.


The great bell booms across the town,
Reverberant and slow,
And drifting from their houses down
The calm-eyed people go.
Their feet fall on the portal stones
Their fathers' fathers trod;
And still the bell, with reverent tones,
From cottage nooks and purple thrones
Is calling souls to God.

The chapel bells with ardor spake
Above the poplars tall,
And perfumed Sabbath seemed to wake.
Responsive to their call
From dappled vale and green hillside
And nestling village hives
The peasants came in simple pride
To hear how their Lord Jesus died
To sweeten all their lives.

They boom beyond the battered town;
The hills are belching smoke;
And valleys charred and ranges brown
Are quaking 'neath the stroke.
The iron roar to Heaven swells,
And domes and steeples nod;
Through cities vast and ferny dells
And village streets the clamant bells
Are calling souls to God!

Edward

Edward Dyson was a versatile Australian writer and poet known for his prose and poetry that vividly depicted the lives and experiences of miners and working-class people in Australia. Born on March 4, 1865, in Ballarat, Victoria, Dyson worked in various manual labor roles in the mining industry before turning to writing. His works often drew from his firsthand experiences and offered a unique perspective on the struggles and triumphs of everyday Australians. Dyson passed away on August 22, 1931.

Edward

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English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Old Church Bell.

It hangs today where it has hung for fifty years or more,
But some who loved its silver tones the church-yard covers o'er,
And many are the times since then, with deep and solemn knell,
Has tolled for dear departed ones the
                                Old
                                    Church
                                        Bell!

Within a latticed tower it swings, high up above the street,
And every Sabbath morn is heard the music clear and sweet
Which floats above the village roofs, and over hill and dell,
Upborne upon the vagrant wind, from the
                                Old
                                    Church
                                        Bell!

Full many a change the hand of Time has in the village wrought,
And ...

George W. Doneghy

For Four Guilds: IV. The Bell-Ringers

The angels are singing like birds in a tree
In the organ of good St. Cecily:
And the parson reads with his hand upon
The graven eagle of great St. John:
But never the fluted pipes shall go
Like the fifes of an army all a-row,
Merrily marching down the street
To the marts where the busy and idle meet;
And never the brazen bird shall fly
Out of the window and into the sky,
Till men in cities and shires and ships
Look up at the living Apocalypse.

But all can hark at the dark of even
The bells that bay like the hounds of heaven,
Tolling and telling that over and under,
In the ways of the air like a wandering thunder,
The hunt is up over hills untrod:
For the wind is the way of the dogs of God:
From the tyrant's tower to the outlaw's den
Huntin...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Silver Tones

A stately church by pious hands erected long ago,
Was found to lack a vesper bell, by which the poor might know
The hour of prayer, the hour of mass, and who had lately died,
The hour when gent and bonny lass, so timid at his side,
Would stand before the surpliced priest, and twain would pledge their troth,
The hour in which the priest would vent on heretic his wrath.
The faithful then were called upon to bring from home and mine
The metal for the holy bell, which must be strong and fine.
In smelting pot of massive size they placed the needed ore;
A molten mass it soon became, but ere in mould they pour,
And thus provide a bell for God to grace His temple fair,
In crowds the people came, to see the metal glowing there.
Then as they passed, with hearts devout, each took a silver c...

Joseph Horatio Chant

Translations. - The Lost Church. (From Uhland.)

In the far forest, overhead,
A bell is often heard obscurely;
How long since first, no one can tell--
Nor can report explain it surely:
From the lost church, the rumour hath,
Out on the winds the ringing goeth;
Once full of pilgrims was the path--
Now where to find it, no one knoweth.

Deep in the wood I lately went
Where no foot-trodden way is lying;
From times corrupt, on evil bent,
My heart to God went out in sighing:
There, in the wild wood's deep repose,
I heard the ringing somewhat nearer;
The higher that my longing rose
Its peal grew fuller and came clearer.

My thoughts upon themselves did brood;
My sense was with the sound so busy
That I have never understood
How I did climb that steep so dizzy.
It seemed more than a hund...

George MacDonald

The Walking Bell

A child refused to go betimes

To church like other people;
He roam'd abroad, when rang the chimes

On Sundays from the steeple.

His mother said: "Loud rings the bell,

Its voice ne'er think of scorning;
Unless thou wilt behave thee well,

'Twill fetch thee without warning."

The child then thought: "High over head

The bell is safe suspended "
So to the fields he straightway sped

As if 'twas school-time ended.

The bell now ceas'd as bell to ring,

Roused by the mother's twaddle;
But soon ensued a dreadful thing!

The bell begins to waddle.

It waddles fast, though strange it seem;

The child, with trembling wonder,
Runs off, and flies, as in a dream;

The bell would draw h...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Joy-Bells

Ring your sweet bells; but let them be farewells
To the green-vista'd gladness of the past
That changed us into soldiers; swing your bells
To a joyful chime; but let it be the last.

What means this metal in windy belfries hung
When guns are all our need? Dissolve these bells
Whose tones are tuned for peace: with martial tongue
Let them cry doom and storm the sun with shells.

Bells are like fierce-browed prelates who proclaim
That "if our Lord returned He'd fight for us."
So let our bells and bishops do the same,
Shoulder to shoulder with the motor bus.

Siegfried Sassoon