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.

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.]

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

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

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.

I call the Living--I mourn the Dead--
I break the Lightning.

I call the Living--I mourn the Dead--
I break the Lightning.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness read more

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land;
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

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!

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.

How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at interval upon the ear
In cadence sweet; read more

How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at interval upon the ear
In cadence sweet; now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on!
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where Memory slept.