Tolling November 2, 2004
Tolling Bells
Matthew Hewitt
I can hear the tolling bells
of the dark tower of babel,
under blood streaked skies I can hear the bells,
a mournful sound the bells of babel,
they are wailing for me,
they are wailing for you,
the spirits they toll the bells,
and we are drawn to them in a dreamy trance,
for the spirits want to posses us,
and lead us to the land of the rotting,
fetid death inhabited home,
of our fathers,
who patiently wait,
for our weeping arrival,
because to the bells of babel we are drawn,
like a bee to a sweetly scented flower,
or as a lover to a lover is drawn,
or like a bat to the darkness,
irresistibly we are drawn.
Meditation 17
John Donne
(excerpt)
Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?
No man is an island. entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The Bells
Edgar Allen Poe
(excerpt)
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 nor human-
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
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