THE five old bells
Are hurrying and eagerly
calling,
Imploring,
protesting
They
know, but clamorously falling
Into gabbling incoherence, never
resting,
Like
spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket
dropping
In splashes of sound, endlessly, never
stopping.
The silver moon
That somebody has spun so
high
To settle the
question, yes or no, has caught
In the net of the night’s balloon,
And sits with a smooth bland
smile up there in
the sky
Smiling at naught,
Unless the winking star that keeps her
company
Makes little
jests at the bells’ insanity,
As if he knew
aught!
The patient Night
Sits indifferent, hugged in her
rags,
She neither
knows nor cares
Why
the old church sobs and brags;
The light distresses her eyes, and
tears
Her old blue
cloak, as she crouches and covers her
face,
Smiling, perhaps, if we knew
it, at the bells’ loud
clattering
disgrace.
The wise old trees
Drop their leaves with a faint,
sharp hiss of contempt,
While a car at the end of the street goes by
with a
laugh;
As by degrees
The poor bells cease, and the Night is
exempt,
And the
stars can chaff
The
ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old
church
Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts
that
lurch
In its cenotaph.