Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CHRISTMAS BELLS, by HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CHRISTMAS BELLS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: What do your clear bells ring to me
Last Line: So many dead! So many dead!
Alternate Author Name(s): Dobson, Austin
Subject(s): Bells; Christmas; World War I; Nativity, The; First World War


WHAT do your clear bells ring to me
In this glad hour of jubilee?
Not joy -- not joy. I hear instead
So many dead! so many dead!

So many, who but yesterday
Went out, great-hearted, to the fray,
Giving up all that they could give
To fight, forsooth! for 'right to live.'

Life was before them, larger scope,
Room for the morrow's quenchless hope...
Now they are stark and cold afar, --
Pawns in this ruthless Game of War!

Glory and power, honour, ease,
What are all those to-day to these?
What their laudation, now they lie
'Piled in the trenches, three feet high!'

This only -- that to duty's call
They answered nobly, each and all:
This also -- that their blood is seed
For bonds unloosed, for peoples freed.

Not less, your peal of bells to me
Rings mourning more than jubilee!
Listen -- and with uncovered head --
So many dead! so many dead!





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