His battle-song,

One quivering flash,

One wildering crash,

Followed by silence dead and dull,

As if the cloud, let go,

Leapt bodily below

To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow,

And then a total lull.

Gone, gone, so soon!

No more my half-dazed fancy there,

Can shape a giant in the air,

No more I see his streaming hair,

The writhing portent of his form;

The pale and quiet moon

Makes her calm forehead bare,

And the last fragments of the storm,

Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea,

Silent and few, are drifting over me.

THE BELLS

EDGAR ALLEN POE

After studying this selection for thought and feeling, each pupil should read it aloud at home and mark especially fine examples of tone-color effects, and adaptations of rhythms.

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Hear the mellow wedding bells,

Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Through the balmy air of night

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How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,

What a liquid ditty floats

To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!

Oh, from out the sounding cells,

What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!

How it dwells

On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels

To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Hear the loud alarum bells,

Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!

In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, 45
Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor
Now-now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!

What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells,

Of the bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

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;

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells-
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,

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