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Songs of
Fancy

To the swinging and the ringing

Of the bells, bells, bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III

Hear the loud alarum bells

Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,

In the clamorous appealing to the mercy of the

fire,

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic

fire,

Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor

Now now to sit or never,

By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells

Of despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!

Songs of
Fancy

What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the

bells

Of the bells

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells,

In the clamor and the clangor of the bells.

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells-
Iron bells!

What a world of solemn thought their monody

compels!

In the silence of the night,

How we shiver with affright

At the melancholy menace of their tone!

For every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats

Is a groan.

And the people—ah, the people—
They that dwell up in the steeple,

All alone,

And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone—

They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute or human-
They are Ghouls:

And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,

Rolls

A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells

With the pean of the bells!
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pean of the bells-
Of the bells:

Keeping time, time, time

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells,

To the sobbing of the bells;

Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,

Songs of
Fancy

Songs of
Fancy

In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells,-
Of the bells, bells, bells,-

To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells,-

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

Sports and Pastimes

In ancient tapestries, centuries old, you sometimes see, wrought in delicate needlework that is faded with the lapse of years, pictures of the sports of the period. There will be quaint scenes showing otter and bear hunting, swans' nesting, hawking, chasing the deer, and the like; in-door scenes, too, depicting pretty pages strumming musical instruments, and lovely ladies at their tambour or 'broidery frames.

The poetry of each passing age preserves pictures of its plays and diversions still more perfectly than worn and tattered tapestry, and the verses we have chosen cover a bewildering variety of pastimes and recreations. The poets have sounded the praises of almost every kind of sport: angling, swimming, skating, bubble-blowing, going a-Maying, walking, riding, whittling, nutting, the country pleasures of "the barefoot boy," the joys of reading, the delights of music, and the exhilarations of cruising and travelling. One poem of the immediate present, Beeching's "Bicycling Song," shows us that the sport of the moment need not of necessity be too commonplace to be wrought into verse. At first thought the amusements of these latter days are so swift and breathless, so complicated with steam, electricity, and other great forces of the new era, that they seem less poetic than the picturesque frolics of milkmaids and shepherds, the games of the old Greeks or the gay sports of the days of chivalry. But after all, as Lowell said, there is as much poetry in the iron horses that eat fire as in those of Diomed that fed on men. If you cut an apple across, you may trace in it the lines of the blossom that the bee hummed around in May; and so the

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