THE BELLS.
I stand by Giotto’s gleaming tower,
In gloom of the cathedral’s wing,
And hear, in the soft sunset hour,
The bells to benediction ring.
That Duomo boasts: “Stone upon stone,
Eternally I rise and rise;
So, pace by pace, zone over zone,
I am uprounded to the skies.”
But simpler effort, as direct
As that of palm or pine, impels
This wonder of the architect
To strike heaven’s blue with clash of bells.
Etrurian Athens! long ago
Thy sister of the Violet Crown,
In colonnades like carven snow—
All crumbled now, and bare, and brown
With ashes of dead sunshine—sate
Among her gods, and had no voice
Potential as their high estate
To summon to the sacrifice.
Worth even the Phidian Jove sublime,
Chryselephantine, and all else
Of the lost forms of olden time,
Fair Florence! are thy living bells.
O bells! O bells! when angels sang,
Surely—though no Evangelist
Has told—a silvery peal first rang,
And Christian chimes came in with Christ.
For bells! O bells! not brazen horn,
Nor sistrum, sackbut, cymbals, gong,
Harsh dissonance of creeds forlorn,
But your sweet tongues to Him belong.
Crowning with music as ye swing
This lily in stone, this lamp of grace,
Wherever Christ the Lord is King,
Ye have commission and a place.
This tower stands square to winds that smite,
Nor fears the thunders to impale.
Prince of the Powers of Air! by rite
Of baptism shall the bells prevail.
Shine, Stella Maris! and O song
Of Ave Mary, and Vesper bells,
Be drowned not in the city’s throng!
For—sad and sweet as Dante tells—
Comes, strangely here, the sense to me
Of parting for some unknown clime,
A sense of silence and the sea,
Charmed by the tryst of star and chime.
O bells! O bells! the worlds are buoyed,
Like beacon-bells, on waves profound,
In all no silence as no void—
The very flowers are cups of sound.
We dream—and dreaming we rejoice—
That we, when great Death draws us nigh,
Hearing, may understand the Voice
Which rocks a bluebell or the sky;
And, with new senses finely strung
In grander Eden’s blossoming,
May see a golden planet swung,
Yet hear the silver lilies ring!