Edgar Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967). Counter-Attack and Other Poems. 1918.

33. Joy-Bells

RING your sweet bells; but let them be farewells

To the green-vista’d gladness of the past

That changed us into soldiers; swing your bells

To a joyful chime; but let it be the last.

What means this metal in windy belfries hung

When guns are all our need? Dissolve these bells

Whose tones are tuned for peace: with martial tongue

Let them cry doom and storm the sun with shells.

Bells are like fierce-browed prelates who proclaim

That ‘if our Lord returned He’d fight for us.’

So let our bells and bishops do the same,

Shoulder to shoulder with the motor-bus.