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

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

How like the leper, with his own sad cry
Enforcing his own solitude, it tolls!
That lonely read more

How like the leper, with his own sad cry
Enforcing his own solitude, it tolls!
That lonely bell set in the rushing shoals,
To warn us from the place of jeopardy!

It cometh into court and pleads the cause
Of creatures dumb and unknown to the laws;
And read more

It cometh into court and pleads the cause
Of creatures dumb and unknown to the laws;
And this shall make, in every Christian clime,
The bell of Atri famous for all time.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

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 cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard,
Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice
Of one, read more

The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard,
Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice
Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims
Tidings of good to Zion.

Hark! the bonny Christ-Church bells,
One, two, three, four, five, six;
They sound so woundy great,
read more

Hark! the bonny Christ-Church bells,
One, two, three, four, five, six;
They sound so woundy great,
So wound'rous sweet,
And they troul so merrily.

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.

For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts read more

For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts of young and old.

Then get thee gone and dig my grave thyself,
And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear
read more

Then get thee gone and dig my grave thyself,
And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear
That thou are crowned, not that I am dead.