Bell

“ Every evening after sunset, when the most wonderful soft light is in the sky and it is very still everywhere, the old bell in the steeple chimes out over the village and the fields around. No one quite knows what the evening bell sings, but the tone is so beautiful that everyone stands still and listens. ”

“ What with the dinner-bell, safety yard bell, school, factory and jail bells, small cupola spring-bells, safety electric bells, not to forget baby’s coral and bells, bell-rattles, last reminiscence of the extinct fool’s cap and bells, and fool’s wand, with its crown of jingling baubles, we seem never to hear the last of bells. Bells are the landmarks of history as well as the daily ministers to our religious and secular life. The bell’s tongue is impartial and passionless as fate. ”

“ While the bell is cooling now, Rigorous toil may have its rest; As birds gambol on the bough, Each may sport as likes him best. When winking stars appear, Freed from every care, The workman hears the vespers toll, Doubts still vex the master's soul. ”

“ The only bell which is heard is rung by Memory, as the hour of prayer draws nigh; some village-bell, far away, that vibrated over the hills of our nativity, the tones of which we have carried away in our soul, and which are awakened by the solemnity of the day. ”

“ Forever sounding in our ears, it has a mood for every hour,—stirring us at times as with the blast of a trumpet, then visiting us in solemn tones, like the bell which calls to prayer, and then again awaking us to unmistakable duty, like the same bell, when at midnight it summons all to stay the raging conflagration. ”

“ I love them all, but O I now depart
A little sadly, strangely, fearfully,
As one who goes to try a Mystery.
The bell is sounding down in Dedham Vale:
Be still, O bell! too often standing here
When all the air was tremulous, fine, and pale,
Thy golden note so calm, so still, so clear,
Out of my stony heart has struck a tear. ”

“ Sweet bell! Church bell!
When earthly joys and sorrows end,
And towards our long repose we tend,
How mournfully thy tone doth call
The weepers to the funeral,
And to the last abode of clay,
With solemn knell mark out the way,
Sad bell! Church bell! ”

“ So it came to pass that Bell, who was very near the gate of heaven already, heard suddenly, as it seemed to her, the music of angels; a tone mingling with her own, pure, thrilling, ecstatic; lifting her on wings of lofty harmony, up, up,—far from earth and its uncertain voices, nearer and ever nearer to where love and light and music were blended in one calm blessedness. ”

“ Now, a bell rings—a magic bell, which still sounds in my ears unlike all other bells—and music plays, amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell of orange-peel and oil. Anon, the magic bell commands the music to cease, and the great green curtain rolls itself up majestically, and The Play begins! The devoted dog of Montargis avenges the death of his master, foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy ”

“ Dost thou not hear the silver bell,
Thro' yonder lime-trees ringing?
'Tis my lady's light gazelle;
To me her love thoughts bringing,—
All the while that silver bell
Around his dark neck ringing. ”

“ Once—only once—in centuries gone,
⁠That awful bell
Pour'd on an ancient woman's ear
⁠Its marvellous knell.
She went to wash her flaxen threads
⁠In that old well—
Her threads had bound the bell around,
⁠She shriek'd—and fell.
She shriek'd and fell—and long she lay
⁠In speechless dread—
She dropp'd the threads, and dropp'd the bell,
⁠And frighted fled.
And then the bell, with fearful sound,
⁠Sunk in the well;
And hill and forest echo'd round
⁠Its fateful knell:
"John, John! is for the greyhound gone." [1]
2. ”

“ With every event in the life of man the bell had made its voice heard. His mother also told him how the chiming of that old bell had once filled her heart with joy and confidence, and that in the midst of the sweet tones her child had been given to her. And the boy gazed on the large, old bell with the deepest interest. ”

“ It lasts much more than one evening, and the gifts bestowed on all are without number, and bright and various indeed to behold. As a father’s tinkling bell brings the children together, so the snowdrop bells call forth all the other flowers. ”

“ Ring the bell softly, there's crape on the door.
Someone is resting from sorrow and sin,
Happy where earth's conflicts enter not in, ...
Joyous as birds when the morning is bright,
When the sweet sunbeams have brought us their light,
Weary with sowing and never to reap,
Weary with labour and welcoming sleep,
Someone's departed to Heaven's glad shore.
Ring the bell softly, there's crape on the door. ”

“ Also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid,—deliciously afraid. ”

“ With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets have all but outsung the bells. The inarticulate bell has found too much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature. ”

“ The language of the birds is understood by the bell, and the wind, which knows everything, roars round the tower and through the windows and loop-holes, and gets all its knowledge from the air, and the bell understands, and rings it out to the whole world, ‘Ding dong, ding dong.’
“But at last,” said the bell, “the work became too heavy for me. ”

“ Should you ever wander of a Sunday morning within sound of the cracked bell that calls a few habit-bound, old-fashioned folk to worship within those damp-stained walls, and drop into talk with the old men who on such days sometimes sit, each in his brass-buttoned long brown coat, upon the low stone coping underneath those broken railings, you might hear this tale from them, as I did, more years ago than I care to recollect. ”

“ In faith, a senseless bell, a merciless bell, waking folk to toil and grief. Dr. Brash and Ailie, heavy-eyed, beside the bed in the attic bower, shivered at the sound of it, and looked with fear and yearning at the sleeping child. ”

“ The bell wuz made of the white roses, and a fair white lily hung down, a-swingin' its noiseless music out into the hearts below—sacred music which we all seemed to hear in our inmost hearts as we looked into the faces that stood under that magic bell. ”

“ The sound of the sabbath bell, whose far thest waves are at this instant breaking on these cliffs, does not awaken pleasing associations alone. Its muse is wonderfully condescending and philanthropic. One involuntarily leans on his staff to humor the unusually meditative mood. ”

“ The bell still ascended, and the buoying power of the water kept him swimming, and made him obey my slightest impulse. The submersion and the contact into which he had come with the corpse had manifestly removed the effects of the liquor, and his imploring eye was eloquent in its appeal to me to continue my grasp. This I did while the bell continued to ascend; the light began to increase in the yolks of glass; and the voices of the men in the lighter greeted my ear. ”

“ The glare grew brighter, the roar of voices deeper; the crash of heavy bodies falling, shook the air; bright streams of sparks rose up into the sky; but louder than them all— rising faster far, to Heaven—a million times more fierce and furious—pouring forth dreadful secrets after its long silence— speaking the language of the dead—the Bell—the Bell! ”

“ The deep tones of the bell drew the workman from his toil, the scholar from his books, the merchant from his traffic, the soldier from his idleness, and already the wide space was covered by an immense crowd which still kept increasing. ”

“ If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? ”

“ One of the earliest recollections of our childhood is of a bell, which, being harsh and dissonant, so worked upon our youthful sensibilities as to cause paroxysms of tears; and now in these later years we are sure that should some genie set us down blindfolded in any place where we had ever remained for a time the mere tones of the bells would enlighten us as to our whereabouts. ”

“ The true test of a bell is its strength of sound. How far can you hear it? is the question, not how heavy it may be. High up in the steeple and on an elevation a bell ought to be heard for miles. In old times the bells summoned the people to gatherings called folk-motes. ”

“ If they can but muzzle the flanks of the bell-mare once in twenty-four hours, often stopping a jolt from the heels of this temperamental monster—the mules appear morally refreshed for any fate.
Miraculous toilers, sexless hybrids—successful ventures into Nature's arcanum of cross-fertilization—steady, humorous, wise, enduring, and homely unto pain! The bond of their whole organization is the bell. It is the source inseparable in their intelligence from all that is lovely and of good report—not the sound, but what the sound represents. ”

“ There is something very fairy-like in the cheerful voice of a bell sounding among the wilder scenes of nature, particularly where Time advances his claim to the sovereignty of the landscape; for the cheerfulness is a little ghostly, and might serve well enough for a tocsin to the elvish hordes whom our footsteps may be supposed to disturb. ”

“ And the eternal thought of God, which everywhere exists, but which is nowhere truly comprehended, and which no image or word can ever quite express, assumes form for our senses and becomes intelligible to our hearts only in the resounding circle of the bell. And so thou bringest to us, thou sweet music of bells, a comforting message from without and from within and from above!" The men gaze at me, wondering at my words and surprised that it is possible to say so much about the ringing of church bells, which one may hear every day over in Holdenschlag. ”

“ For, if it is humiliating to reflect that the bell at my own door is not mine, it is extremely gratifying to be reminded that, beyond my door, there are millions and millions of bells that I can proudly call my own. I am not generally considered musical; but I spend a good deal of my time in bell-ringing. ”

“ Bell′-rope, the rope by which a bell is rung.—adj. Bell′-shaped.—ns. Bell′-tow′er, a tower built to contain one or more bells, a campanile; Bell′-tur′ret, a turret containing a bell-chamber, usually crowned with a spire; Bell′-weth′er, the leading sheep of a flock, on whose neck a bell is hung: (fig.) any loud, turbulent fellow, esp. the leader of a mob.—Bell, book, and candle, a phrase popularly used in reference to a form of excommunication ending with the words, 'Do to [shut] the book, quench the candle, ring the bell.'—To bear or carry off the bell, to have or to gain the first place. ”

“ CHAPTER XV. BELL RHYMES. The jingle of the bells in nursery poetry is certainly the prettiest of all the features in the poetical fictions of Baby-land.
The oft-repeated rhyme of—
"Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, [K]
To see a fair [L] lady upon a white horse;
Bells [M] on her fingers and bells on her toes,
She will have music wherever she goes,"
has a charm with every child. ”

“ There were big bronze bells marked with the Florentine lily; bells of the Renaissance, representing a lady wearing a white gown; bells of the dead, decorated with tears and bones; bells covered with symbolical animals and leaves, which had rung in the churches in the time of St. Louis; table-bells of the seventeenth century, having a statuette for a handle; the flat, clear cow-bells of the Ruth Valley; Hindu bells; Chinese bells formed like cylinders—they had come from all countries and all times, at the magic call of little Miss Bell. ”

“ That the Bells should be rung in peal, for a quarter of an hour and no more, after every Marriage.
d. That the great Bell should be tolled, according to the Canon, (for a quarter of an hour) when any is passing out of this life, or appears to be dying. ”

“ Bells and their Messages. By Edward Bradbury.
Do not imagine that this is an essay on campanology, on change-ringing, grandsires, and triple bob-majors. Do not fancy that it will deal with carillons, the couvre-feu, or curfew bell, with the solemn Passing bell, the bell of the public crier, the jingling sleigh bell, the distant sheep bell, the noisy railway bell, the electric call bell, the frantic fire bell, the mellow, merry marriage peal, the sobbing muffled peal, the devout Angelus, or the silvery convent chimes that ring for prime and tierce, sext, nones, vespers, and compline. ”

“ In a little while the tinkling of a bell is heard, notifying the approach of the Viaticum. ,Instantly high and low, poor and rich, are on their knees; till as its feeble sound dies in the distance, one by one they rise and pursue their way. ”

“ Bell customs and village life—Antiquity of bells—Christening of bells—“Ancients”—Inscriptions—Dedications—Inscriptions of praise—Leonine verses—Curious inscriptions—Historical events recorded—Uses of bells—Passing bell—Pancake bell—Curfew—Guiding bells—Names of benefactors—Great bells—Sanctus bell—Sacring bell—Frequent ringing of bell—Change-ringing—Care of bells.
Bells play an important part in village life, and there are few more interesting branches of the study of village antiquities than bell-lore. Ringing customs throw much light upon the manners and doings of our ancestors. ”

“ But if you listen critically to each bell, when a row of carts is passing, you will every now and then hear one of a peculiarly rich and mellow sound. I once tried to persuade a man to sell a melodious bell which I heard by chance as he drove by, but he would not entertain the idea for a moment. ”