106 BEYIEW — TALES OE MTSTEET AND POEMS. 



ranal choristers, not unknown as Canadian nightingales ! The 

 Sleigh Bell ; the Wedding Bell ; the Fire Bell ; and the Funeral 

 Knell ; each in succession has a stanza devoted to it. It is not un- 

 characteristic, nor without its significance, that the " Sabbath Bell" 

 finds no place in the otherwise comprehensive series. The second 

 and the last of these lyrical peals will suffice to exhibit the poet 

 once more in his real aspect of strange antithesis : 



Hear the mellow wedding bells, 

 Golden bells ! 

 What a world of happiness their harmony fortells ! 

 Through the balmy air of night 

 How they ring out their delight! 

 From the molten-golden notes, 



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 swells ! 

 How it swells ; 

 How it dwells 

 On the Future ! how it tells 

 Of the rapture that impels 

 To the swinging and the ringing 



Of the bells, bells, bells, 

 Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 

 Bells, bells, bells- - 

 To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! 



Hear the tolling of the bells ! 

 Iron bells ! 

 What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! 

 In the silence of the night, 

 How we shiver with affright 

 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 — 

 4 They that dwell up in the steeple, 



All alone, 

 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 — 

 They are neither brute nor human — 



