Your voices break and falter in the darkness,--
Break, falter, and are still.

Your voices break and falter in the darkness,--
Break, falter, and are still.

Those evening bells! those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells!

Those evening bells! those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells!

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.]

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.

Bells call others, but themselves enter not into the Church.

Bells call others, but themselves enter not into the Church.

Softly the loud peal dies,
In passing winds it drowns,
But breathes, like perfect joys,
read more

Softly the loud peal dies,
In passing winds it drowns,
But breathes, like perfect joys,
Tender tones.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow.

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.

These bells have been anointed,
And baptized with holy water!

These bells have been anointed,
And baptized with holy water!