Toll, toll, thou solemn bell! A royal head lies low, And mourners through the palace halls Slowly and sadly go. Lift up thine awful voice, Thou, silent for so long! Say that a monarch’s soul has passed To join the shadowy throng.
Toll yet again, thou bell! Mutely thine iron tongue, Prisoned within yon lofty tower, For many a year has hung. But now its mournful peal Startles a nation’s ear, And swells from listening shore to shore, That the whole world may hear.
A whisper from the past Blends with each solemn tone That from those brazen lips of thine Upon the air is thrown. Never had trumpet’s peal, On clarion sounding shrill, Such power as that deep undertone The listener’s heart to thrill.
Come, tell us tales, thou bell, Of those of old renown, Those sturdy warrior kings who fought For sceptre and for crown. Tell of the lion-hearts Whose pulses moved the world; Whose banners flew so swift and far, O’er land and sea unfurled!
From out the buried years, From many a vaulted tomb, Whence neither pomp nor power could chase The dim, sepulchral gloom, Lo, now, a pale, proud line, They glide before our eyes!— Art thou a wizard, mighty bell, To bid the dead arise?
But toll, toll on, thou bell! Toll for the royal dead; Toll—for the hand now sceptreless; Toll—for the crownless head; Toll—for the human heart With all its loves and woes; Toll—for the soul that passes now Unto its long repose!
DECEMBER 26, 1910
A BALLAD OF MAJOR ANDERSON
Come, children, leave your playing this dark and stormy night, Shut fast the rattling window-blinds, and make the fire burn bright; And hear an old man’s story, while loud the fierce winds blow, Of gallant Major Anderson and fifty years ago.
I was a young man then, boys, but twenty-nine years old, And all my comrades knew me for a soldier brave and bold; My eye was bright, my step was firm, I measured six feet two, And I knew not what it was to shirk when there was work to do.
We were stationed at Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, then, A brave band, though a small one, of scarcely seventy men; And day and night we waited for the coming of the foe, With noble Major Anderson, just fifty years ago.