16.

CHURCH BELLS.

"Let the hills hear thy voice."

"WAKE me to-night, my mother dear,
That I may hear

The Christmas Bells, so soft and clear,

To high and low glad tidings tell,

How God the Father loved us well,

How God the Eternal Son

Came to undo what we had done,

How God the Paraclete,

Who in the chaste womb framed the Babe so sweet, In

power and glory came, the birth to aid and greet.

"Wake me, that I the twelvemonth long

May bear the song

About with me in the world's throng;

That treasured joys of Christmas tide

May with mine hour of gloom abide ;
The Christmas carol ring

Deep in my heart, when I would sing ;
Each of the twelve good days

Its earnest yield of duteous love and praise,
Ensuring happy months, and hallowing common ways.

"Wake me again, my mother dear,

That I may hear

The peal of the departing year.

O well I love, the step of Time

Should move to that familiar chime :

Fair fall the tones that steep

The Old Year in the dews of sleep,

The New guide softly in

With hopes to sweet sad memories akin!

Long may that soothing cadence ear, heart, conscience

win."

In the dark winter, ere the snow
Had lost its glow,

This melody we learned; and lo!

We hear it now in every breeze

That stirs on high the summer trees.
We pause and look around—

Where may the lone church-tower be found,
That speaks our tongue so well?

The dim peal in the torrent seems to dwell,
It greets us from afar in Ocean's measured swell.

Perhaps we sit at home, and dream

On some high theme,

And forms, that in low embers gleam,
Come to our twilight Fancy's aid:

Then, wavering as that light and shade,
The breeze will sigh and wail,

And

up and down its plaintive scale Range fitfully, and bear

Meet burden to the lowly whispered air,

And ever the sweet bells, that charmed Life's morn,

are there.

The pine-logs on the hearth sometimes

Mimic the chimes,

The while on high the white wreath climbs,
Which seething waters upward fling,

In prison wont to dance and sing,

All to the same low tune.

But most it loves in bowers of June

At will to come and go,

Where like a minster roof the arched boughs show,
And court the pensive ear of loiterer far below.

Be mine at Vesper hour to stray

Full oft that way,

And when the dreamy sounds decay,
As with the sun the gale dies down,
Then far away, from tower or town,
A true peal let me hear,

In manifold melodious cheer,

Through all the lonely grove

Wafting a fair good-night from His high love,

Who strews our world with signs from His own world above.

So never with regretful eye

Need we descry

Dark mountains in the evening sky,

Nor on those ears with envy think,
Which nightly from the cataract shrink
In heart-ennobling fear,

And in the rushing whirlwind hear

(When from his Highland cave

He sweeps unchained over the wintry wave)

Ever the same deep chords, such as home fancies

crave.

Ever the same, yet ever new,

Changed and yet true,

Like the pure heaven's unfailing blue,

Which varies on from hour to hour,

Yet of the same high Love and Power
Tells alway-such may seem
Through life, or waking or in dream,

The echoing Bells that gave

Our childhood welcome to the healing wave:

Such the remembered Word, so mighty then to save.