You May Also Like / View all maxioms
Hark, how chimes the passing bell!
There's no music to a knell;
All the other sounds we read more
Hark, how chimes the passing bell!
There's no music to a knell;
All the other sounds we hear,
Flatter, and but cheat our ear.
This doth put us still in mind
That our flesh must be resigned,
And, a general silence made,
The world be muffled in a shade.
[Orpheus' lute, as poets tell,
Was but moral of this bell,
And the captive soul was she,
Which they called Eurydice,
Rescued by our holy groan,
A loud echo to this tone.]
The Bell never rings of itself; unless some one handles or moves
it it is dumb.
[Lat., Nunquam read more
The Bell never rings of itself; unless some one handles or moves
it it is dumb.
[Lat., Nunquam aedepol temere tinniit tintinnabulum;
Nisi quis illud tractat aut movet, mutum est, tacet.]
He heard the convent bell,
Suddenly in the silence ringing
For the service of noonday.
He heard the convent bell,
Suddenly in the silence ringing
For the service of noonday.
The bells themselves are the best of preachers,
Their brazen lips are learned teachers,
From their pulpits read more
The bells themselves are the best of preachers,
Their brazen lips are learned teachers,
From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air,
Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw,
Shriller than trumpets under the Law,
Now a sermon and now a prayer.
And this be the vocation fit,
For which the founder fashioned it;
High, high above earth's life, read more
And this be the vocation fit,
For which the founder fashioned it;
High, high above earth's life, earth's labor
E'en to the heaven's blue vault to soar.
To hover as the thunder's neighbor,
The very firmament explore.
To be a voice as from above
Like yonder stars so bright and clear,
That praise their Maker as they move,
And usher in the circling year.
Tun'd be its metal mouth alone
To things eternal and sublime.
And as the swift wing'd hours speed on
May it record the flight of time!
Dear bells! how sweet the sound of village bells
When on the undulating air they swim!
Dear bells! how sweet the sound of village bells
When on the undulating air they swim!
With deep affection
And recollection
I often think of
Those Shandon bells,
read more
With deep affection
And recollection
I often think of
Those Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would,
In the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle
Their magic spells.
Ring out, will bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light.
Ring out, will bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light.