The Clock-Tower Bell.

Say not, sad bell, another hour hath come,
Bare for the record of a world of crime;
Toll, rather, friend, the end of hideous Time,
Wherein we bloom, live, die, yet have no home!

Bell, laurels would we o'er thy pulsing twine,
And sing thee songs of triumph with glad tears,
If to the warring of our haggard years
Thy clang should herald peace along the line!

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was an American Roman Catholic nun and social worker. Born on May 20, 1851, in Lenox, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the famous novelist. After a failed marriage, Lathrop turned towards religious life and dedicated herself to caring for those with incurable cancer. She founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, and the community grew to operate several homes for cancer patients. She passed away on July 9, 1926.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

Peace.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

A Youth's Suicide.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

For Others.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

God-Made.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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

The Bell.

Through the calm and silent air
    Floats the tolling funeral bell,
    Swooning over hill and dell,
Heavy laden with despair;
    Mute between each muffled stroke,
    Sad as though a dead voice spoke,
    Out of the dim Past time spoke,
Stands my heart all mute with care.

The Bell is tolling on, and deep,
    Deep and drear into my heart
    All its bitter accents dart.
Peace! sad chime, I will not weep--
    What is there within thy tone,
    That should wring my heart alone,
    Rive it with this endless moan?
Peace! and let past sorrows sleep!

Fling your music on the breeze,
    Mock the sighing of the willows,
    Mock the lapping of the billows,
Mock not human sympathies;
    Slow chime, sad chime, mock me not,
    ...

Walter R. Cassels

Looking Backward.

Gray towers make me think of thee,
Thou girl of olden minstrelsy,
Young as the sunlight of to-day,
Silent as tasselled boughs in May!

A wind-flower in a world of harm,
A harebell on a turret's arm,
A pearl upon the hilt of fame
Thou wert, fair child of some high name.

The velvet page, the deep-eyed knight,
The heartless falcon, poised for flight,
The dainty steed and graceful hound,
In thee their keenest rapture found.

But for old ballads, and the rhyme
And writ of genius o'er the time
When keeps had newly reared their towers,
The winning scene had not been ours.

O Chivalry! thy age was fair,
When even knaves set out to dare
Their heads for any barbarous crime,
And hate was brave, and love sublime.

The bugle-no...

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

The Bell

I love thy music, mellow bell,
I love thine iron chime,
To life or death, to heaven or hell,
Which calls the sons of Time.

Thy voice upon the deep
The home-bound sea-boy hails,
It charms his cares to sleep,
It cheers him as he sails.

To house of God and heavenly joys
Thy summons called our sires,
And good men thought thy sacred voice
Disarmed the thunder's fires.

And soon thy music, sad death-bell,
Shall lift its notes once more,
And mix my requiem with the wind
That sweeps my native shore.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beyond Utterance.

There in the midst of gloom the church-spire rose,
And not a star lit any side of heaven;
In glades not far the damp reeds coldly touched
Their sides, like soldiers dead before they fall;
There in the belfry clung the sleeping bat, -
Most abject creature, hanging like a leaf
Down from the bell-tongue, silent as the speech
The dead have lost ere they are laid in graves.

A melancholy prelude I would sing
To song more drear, while thought soars into gloom.
Find me the harbor of the roaming storm,
Or end of souls whose doom is life itself!
So vague, yet surely sad, the song I dream
And utter not. So sends the tide its roll, -
Unending chord of horror for a woe
We but half know, even when we die of it.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

A Peal Of Bells

Strike the bells wantonly,
    Tinkle tinkle well;
Bring me wine, bring me flowers,
    Ring the silver bell.
All my lamps burn scented oil,
    Hung on laden orange-trees,
Whose shadowed foliage is the foil
    To golden lamps and oranges.
Heap my golden plates with fruit,
    Golden fruit, fresh-plucked and ripe;
    Strike the bells and breathe the pipe;
Shut out showers from summer hours--
Silence that complaining lute--
    Shut out thinking, shut out pain,
    From hours that cannot come again.

Strike the bells solemnly,
    Ding dong deep:
My friend is passing to his bed,
    Fast asleep;
There's plaited linen round his head,
    While foremost go his feet--
His feet that cannot carry him.
My feast's a show, my lights...

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Time To Go.

They know the time to go!
The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour
In field and woodland, and each punctual flower
Bows at the signal an obedient head
And hastes to bed.

The pale Anemone
Glides on her way with scarcely a good-night;
The Violets tie their purple nightcaps tight;
Hand clasped in hand, the dancing Columbines,
In blithesome lines,

Drop their last courtesies,
Flit from the scene, and couch them for their rest;
The Meadow Lily folds her scarlet vest
And hides it 'neath the Grasses' lengthening green;
Fair and serene,

Her sister Lily floats
On the blue pond, and raises golden eyes
To court the golden splendor of the skies,--
The sudden signal comes, and down she goes
To find repose,

In the cool depths b...

Susan Coolidge