Hear the mellow wedding bells-
Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
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 wells!
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 loud alarum bells!
Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror now their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of tune,

To the clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor,

Now-now to sit or never,

By the side of the pale faced moon.

Oh, the bells, bells, bells,

What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear it fully knows,

By the twanging,

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet the ear distinctly tells

In the jangling,

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells, Of the bells

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

In the clamor and the clangor 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

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→
They are ghouls!

And their king it is who tolls,

And he rolls, rolls, rolls,

Rolls,

A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pean of the bells!
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells→→→
Of the bells, bells, bells,
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells,
To the tolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

LONGFELLOW.

It was the schooner Hesperus

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter

To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds

That ope in the month of May.

...

The skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now west, now south.

Then up and spake an old sailor,

Had sailed to the Spanish Main:

"I pray thee put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to night no moon we see!"
The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the northeast;

The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frightened steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither, my little daughter,

And do not tremble so ;

For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,

And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church bells ring, O say, what may it be?"

"Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns, O say, what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light,
O say what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and the hard sea sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks they gored her side

Like the horns of an angry bull.