IX.CHRISTMAS BELLS.
O silver-chiming bells, in the misty Christmas morning,
Filling with glad ripples the frost-enlightened air,
What song is it you sing to us,
What tidings that you bring to us,
What burden that the clamours of your changeful cadence bear?
Do ye still recall the advent of the star-enkindled dawning,
When 'mid flower-calm the lily of old Christendom was born?
Still hail the domination,
In many a land and nation,
Of Him who opened baby eyes upon that thronéd morn?
Alas! sad bells, this many a day, your tune has lost its meaning;
The earth to your bright jubilance is echoless for woe:
A strange, prophetic sadness
Lies heart-deep in your gladness;
Ye can never stir the world again into the olden glow.
Ye should rather mourn for hope and faith, that in Christ's grave lie buried,
Never again, it seems to us, to see the daybreak beam.
The tender, sweet old story
Has lost its morning glory;
The trace of Christ has faded and His Gospel is a dream.
Or is it for the year that's past your brazen throats are clanging,
To celebrate its harvesting of righteousness and peace?
And is your carol's burden
The happy golden guerdon,
That love and faith have garnered up to swell the years' increase?
Are hope and peace so rife, O bells, is Christ-like love so plentiful,
That ye must wake the world that sleeps, worn out with toil and care,
That ye must rend night's quiet
With your rejoiceful riot
And from tired eyes forgetfulness of blesséd sleep must scare?
Are this dead year's last moments, the coming one's dim prospect
So fair with happy memories, with Spring-sweet hope so bright?
Was that which fades so sweet for us
And were its steps so fleet for us
That ye must needs proclaim it to the startled ear of night?
Is it for our glad progress, in the year that lies a-dying,
Toward the dream prophetic of God's kingdom upon earth,
Ye break the Yule-night glamour
With your clarion-throated clamour,
Whilst men are mute for shame before the morning of Christ's birth?
Alas! there is no peace for us: the earth is full of misery;
The folk are crazed with lust of gain and mean unknightly strife:
The earth with blood is weary
And the world is bare and dreary,
For crime and greed have choked with thorns the amaranth of life.
In vain ye fill the air with notes, that tell of hope and gladness:
Your throats should ring with dirges for the year that's growing cold,
Should wake the folk from sleeping
To the coming time of reaping
For what they've sown in this dead year, whose days are almost told.
Ring, weary bells, from out your spires, and wake the world to consciousness
Of all the weary work that lies before the failing feet.
Toll for the pest-scathed city,
In which there is no pity,
Where crime infests each alley and famine chokes each street.
Toll for the craze of sightless greed, that blinds the folk to righteousness
And bids them set no price on aught that is not bought or sold;
Toll for the past year's madness
And the coming one's vague sadness;
Toll, sad bells, for the new year and the old.
