The Village Bells

How soft the music 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 mem'ry slept.”
Cowper.

There is a lovely English sound
    Upon the English air,
It comes when else had silence found
    Its quiet empire there.

All ordinary signs of life
    To-day are hushed and still ;
No voice of labour or of strife
    Ascends the upland hill.

The leaves in softer music stir,
    The brook in softer tune ;
Life rests, and all things rest with her
    This Sabbath afternoon.

How fair it is ! how English fair !
    No other land could show
A pastoral beauty to compare
    With that which lies below.

The broad green meadow-lands extend
    Up to the hanging wood,
Where oak and beech together blend,
    That have for ages stood.

What victories have left those trees,
    What time the winged mast
Bore foreign shores and foreign seas
    St. George's banner past.

Each oak that left yon inland wood
    In some good ship had part,
And every triumph stirred the blood
    In every English heart.

Hence, each green hedge that winds along
    Filled with the wild flowers small,
Round each green field, is safe and strong
    As is a castle wall.

God, in his own appointed time,
    Hath made such tumult cease ;
There ringeth now in that sweet chime
    But only prayer and peace.

How still it is ! the bee — the bird —
    Float by on noiseless wing.
There sounds no step — there comes no word,
    There seems no living thing.

But still upon the soft west wind
    These bells come sweeping by,
Leaving familiar thoughts behind,
    Familiar, and yet high.

Ringing for every funeral knell,
    And for the marriage stave ;
Alike of life and death they tell,
    The cradle and the grave.

They chronicle the hopes and fears
    Upon life's daily page ;
Familiar to our childish years,
    Familiar to our age.

The Sabbath bells upon our path,
    Long may their sound endure ;
The sweetest music England hath —
    The music of the poor.