Page 62 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells,-- From the jingling and the tinkling of the
bells.

Mrs. Shaw then wrote the words, "The heavy iron bells." Poe immediately

completed the stanza which now reads:

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! And he dances, and he yells, Keeping
time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the paean of the bells, Of the

bells.

The other stanzas were written afterward. There is music in these words;
but do not think that the music is all. Underneath is the deep harmony of
human suggestion, as in the lines,

Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone.

Now let us see if we can represent by musical notes the meter in which this
poem is written. We must remember that a punctuation mark at the end of a

line often makes a complete pause, which is represented in music by a rest.
In music a rest has the same effect in completing a bar as the corresponding

note. Here are the first two lines:

[Illustration: (music) Hear the sledg-es with the bells, Sil-ver bells!]

In the two following lines the commas in the middle of the line stand for

rests, like the punctuation at the end of the first line; or if we wish we can
make the words "time, time, time," three longer notes. It all depends on