To the tintinabulation that so musically wells From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II. Hear the mellow wedding bells, What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! How they ring out their delight! 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! To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells 1 III. Hear the loud alarum bells — Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells ! How they scream out their affright! They can only shriek, shriek, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! How they clang, and clash, and roar ! 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, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells- Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! IV. Hear the tolling of the bells What a world of solemn thought their monody compels ! 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 - 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 And their king it is who tolls; Rolls A pæan from the bells! Keeping time, time, time, To the sobbing of the bells; As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 66 AN ENIGMA. ELDOM we find," says Solomon Don Dunce, "Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. Through all the flimsy things we see at once As easily as through a Naples bonnetTrash of all trash! how can a lady don it! Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff The general tuckermanities are arrant But this is, now, you may depend upon itStable, opaque, immortal-all by dint Of the dear names that lie concealed within 't. ANNABEL LEE. IT was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may By the name of ANNABEL LEE; And this maiden she lived with no other thought know |