THE pull-wheel whirled in the bell-tower, The bell heaved up to yawn; Its looming shoulder sank in the dark Like a sleeper's waked ere dawn. The priest cried up the stair "Now who has dared to pass, With never a breath of the holy words And never a coin for a mass?" The sexton moaned as he wrought "For no earth-dead do I toll; There's a wife a-bed, and I wistfully ring A knell for a new-born soul. "For when a child is born A spirit must leave God's house; And is not that the blindest death, Numbest, most piteous?" "And how many years do you toll?" "Ah God, if I only knew I might learn the place where Heaven is, And a light-swift path thereto." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SICK ROSE, FR. SONGS OF EXPERIENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF THE HALIBUT ON WHICH I DINED by WILLIAM COWPER THE COMING AMERICAN by SAM WALTER FOSS PARADISI GLORIA by THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS THE CONQUERED BANNER by ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN SUMMER'S JOE by PATRICK JOHN MCALISTER ANDERSON |