Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

137
And are bless'd in the name of that God to whose honour they ever shall
ring.
Toll, toll! with a rapid vibration, with a melody silv'ry and strong,
The bells from the sound-shaken belfry are singing their first maiden
song;
Not now for the dead or the living, or the triumphs of peace or of
strife,
But a quick joyous outburst of jubilee full of their newly-felt life;
Rapid, more rapid, the clapper rebounds from the round of the bells--
Far and more far through the valley the intertwined melody swells--
Quivering and broken the atmosphere trembles and twinkles around,
Like the eyes and the hearts of the hearers that glisten and beat to the
sound.
But how to express all his rapture when echo the deep cadence bore
To the old Campanaro reclining in the shade of his vine-covered door,
How to tell of the bliss that came o'er him as he gazed on the fair
evening star,
And heard the faint toll of the vesper bell steal o'er the vale from
afar--
Ah! it was not alone the brief ecstasy music doth ever impart
When Sorrow and Joy at its bidding come together and dwell in the heart;
But it was that delicious sensation with which the young mother is
blest,
As she lists to the laugh of her child as it falleth asleep on her
breast.
From a sweet night of slumber he woke; but it was not that morn had
unroll'd
O'er the pale, cloudy tents of the Orient, her banners of purple and
gold:
It was not the song of the skylark that rose from the green pastures
near,
But the sound of his bells that fell softly, as dew on the slumberer's
ear.
At that sound he awoke and arose, and went forth on the bead-bearing
grass--
At that sound, with his loving Francesca, he piously knelt at the Mass.
If the sun shone in splendour around him, and that certain music were
dumb,