Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Chrift that is to be.

Tennyson.

THOSE EVENING BELLS.

CHOSE evening bells! those evening

T

bells!

How many a tale their mufic tells,
Of youth, and home, and that sweet time,
When last I heard their soothing chime.

Those joyous hours are past away;
And many a heart that then was gay,
Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
And hears no more those evening bells.

And so 'twill be when I am gone;
That tuneful peal will still ring on,
While other bards fhall walk these dells,
And fing your praise, sweet evening bells!

Moore.

DOR 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.
The clangorous hammer is the tongue,
This way, that way, beaten and swung,
That from mouth of brass, as from Mouth of
Gold,

May be taught the Teftaments, New and Old.
And above it the great croff-beam of wood
Representeth the Holy Rood,

Upon which, like the bell, our hopes are hung.
And the wheel wherewith it is swayed and rung
Is the mind of man, that round and round

Sways, and maketh the tongue to sound!
And the rope, with its twisted cordage three,
Denoteth the Scriptural Trinity

Of Morals, and Symbols, and History;

And the upward and downward motions show
That we touch upon matters high and low;
And the conftant change and transmutation
Of action and of contemplation,

Downward, the Scripture brought from on high,
Upward, exalted again to the sky;
Downward, the literal interpretation,
Upward, the Vision and Mystery!

Long fellow.

FROM "IN MEMORIAM, XXVIII.”

T

HE time draws near the birth of
Chrift:

The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill

Answer each other in the mist.

野

S

70

Four voices of four hamlets round,

From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were fhut between me and the sound:

Each voice four changes on the wind,

That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and good-will, good-will and peace,
Peace and good-will, to all mankind.

This year I flept and woke with pain,

I almost wished no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break,
Before I heard those bells again :

But they my troubled spirit rule,

For they controlled me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touched with joy,
The merry, merry bells of Yule.

HOW SOFT THE MUSIC OF THOSE
VILLAGE BELLS.

DEEE

T

OW soft the mufic of those village bells, Falling at intervals 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 flept. Wherever I have heard A kindred melody, the scene recurs, And with it all its pleasures and its pains. Such comprehenfive views the spirit takes, That in a few fhort moments I retrace (As in a map the voyager his course) The windings of my way through many years.

Cowper.