Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Tennyson. THOSE EVENING BELLS. GHOSE evening bells! those evening T bells! How many a tale their mufic tells, Of youth, and home, and that sweet time, Those joyous hours are past away; And many a heart that then was gay, And hears no more those evening bells. While other bards fhall walk these dells, Moore. ˋ 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! Of Morals, and Symbols, and History; And the upward and downward motions show Downward, the Scripture brought from on high, Upward, the Vision and Mystery! The moon is hid; the night is ftill; The Christmas bells from hill to hill Answer each other in the mist. S 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, Peace and good-will, to all mankind. HOW SOFT THE MUSIC OF THOSE VILLAGE BELLS. OW soft the mufic of those village bells, In cadence sweet, now dying all away, Cowper. CALIFORNIA |