C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Broken Bell

BITTER and sweet, when wintry evenings fall

Across the quivering, smoking hearth, to hear

Old memory’s notes sway softly far and near,

While ring the chimes across the gray fog’s pall.

Thrice blessed bell, that, to time insolent,

Still calls afar its old and pious song,

Responding faithfully in accents strong,

Like some old sentinel before his tent.

I too—my soul is shattered;—when at times

It would beguile the wintry nights with rhymes

Of old, its weak old voice at moments seems

Like gasps some poor, forgotten soldier heaves

Beside the blood-pools—’neath the human sheaves

Gasping in anguish toward their fixèd dreams.