Famous Bell Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Bell poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous bell poems. These examples illustrate what a famous bell poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Mother Goose
I had a little boy,
And called him Blue Bell;
Gave him a little work,--
He did it very well.
I bade him go upstairs
To bring me a gold pin;
In coal scuttle fell he,
Up to his little chin.
He went to the garden
To pick a little sage;
He tumbled on his nose,
And fell into...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Bell horses, bell horses, what time of day?
One o'clock, two o'clock, three and away....Read more of this...
by
Marvin Bell
You are not beautiful, exactly.
You are beautiful, inexactly.
You let a weed grow by the mulberry
And a mulberry grow by the house.
So close, in the personal quiet
Of a windy night, it brushes the wall
And sweeps away the day till we sleep.
A child said it, and it seemed true:
"Things that are lost are all equal."
But it isn't true. If I lost...Read more of this...
by
Marvin Bell
I wanted to see the self, so I looked at the mulberry.
It had no trouble accepting its limits,
yet defining and redefining a small area
so that any shape was possible, any movement.
It stayed put, but was part of all the air.
I wanted to learn to be there and not there
like the continually changing, slightly moving
mulberry, wild cherry and particularly the...Read more of this...
by
Marvin Bell
crawl toward the machine guns
except to freeze
for explosions and flares.
It was still ninety degrees
at night in North Carolina,
August, rain and all.
The tracer bullets wanted
our asses, which we swore to keep
down, and the highlight
of this preposterous exercise
was finding myself in mud
and water during flares. I
hurried in the darkness--
over things and under things--
to reach the next black pool
in time, and once
I...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Yon, in the depths of the evening's track,
Like a herd of blind bullocks that seek their fellows,
Wild, as in terror, the tempest bellows.
And suddenly, there, o'er the gables black
That the church, in the twilight, around it raises
All scored with lightnings the steeple blazes.
See the old bell-ringer, frenzied with fear.
Mouth gaping, yet speechless, draw hastening near.
And the knell of alarm that...Read more of this...
by
Louisa May Alcott
Thistledown in prison sings:
Bright shines the summer sun,
Soft is the summer air;
Gayly the wood-birds sing,
Flowers are blooming fair.
But, deep in the dark, cold rock,
Sadly I dwell,
Longing for thee, dear friend,
Lily-Bell! Lily-Bell!
Lily-Bell replies:
Through sunlight and summer air
I have sought for thee long,
Guided by birds and flowers,
And now by thy song.
Thistledown! Thistledown!
O'er hill and dell
Hither to comfort thee
Comes Lily-Bell....Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
The blue bell is the sweetest flower
That waves in summer air;
Its blossoms have the mightiest power
To soothe my spirit's care.
There is a spell in purple heath
Too wildly, sadly dear;
The violet has a fragrant breath
But fragrance will not cheer.
The trees are bare, the sun is cold;
And seldom, seldom seen;
The heavens have lost their zone of gold
The earth its...Read more of this...
by
Weldon Kees
The tower bell in the Tenth Street Church
Rang out nostalgia for the refugee
Who knew the source of bells by sound.
We liked it, but in ignorance.
One meets authorities on bells infrequently.
Europe alone made bells with such a tone,
Herr Mannheim said. The bell
Struck midnight, and it shook the room.
He had heard bells in Leipzig, Chartres, Berlin,
Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Rome.
He was a...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
THE SMILING Spring comes in rejoicing,
And surly Winter grimly flies;
Now crystal clear are the falling waters,
And bonie blue are the sunny skies.
Fresh o’er the mountains breaks forth the morning,
The ev’ning gilds the ocean’s swell;
All creatures joy in the sun’s returning,
And I rejoice in my bonie Bell.
The flowery Spring leads sunny Summer,
The yellow Autumn presses...Read more of this...
by
Marvin Bell
In a wilderness, in some orchestral swing
through trees, with a wind playing all the high notes,
and the prospect of a string bass inside the wood,
I, or someone like me, had a kind of vision.
As the person on the ground moved, bursting halos
topped first one tree, then another and another,
till the work of sight was forced to go lower
into a...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1896
They christened my brother of old--
And a saintly name he bears--
They gave him his place to hold
At the head of the belfry-stairs,
Where the minister-towers stand
And the breeding kestrels cry.
Would I change with my brother a league inland?
(Shoal! 'Ware shoal!) Not I!
In the flush of the hot June prime,
O'ersleek flood-tides afire,
I hear him hurry the...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,
They were two bonny lasses;
They built their house upon the lea,
And covered it with rushes.
Bessy kept the garden gate,
And Mary kept the pantry;
Bessy always had to wait,
While Mary lived in plenty....Read more of this...
by
Louisa May Alcott
Awake! Awake! for the earliest gleam
Of golden sunlight shines
On the rippling waves, that brightly flow
Beneath the flowering vines.
Awake! Awake! for the low, sweet chant
Of the wild-birds' morning hymn
Comes floating by on the fragrant air,
Through the forest cool and dim;
Then spread each wing,
And work, and sing,
Through the long, bright sunny...Read more of this...
by
Marvin Bell
Gray rainwater lay on the grass in the late afternoon.
The carp lay on the bottom, resting, while dusk took shape
in the form of the first stirrings of his hunger,
and the trees, shorter and heavier, breathed heavily upward.
Into this sodden, nourishing afternoon I emerged,
partway toward a paycheck, halfway toward the weekend,
carrying the last mail and holding above still puddles
the books...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar;
And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.
That was all -- the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar.
Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling-bar.
For my misty meditation, at the...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each 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 a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Ding, dong, bell,
Pussy's in the well!
Who put her in?
Little Tommy Lin.
Who pulled her out?
Little Johnny Stout.
What a naughty boy was that,
To try to drown poor pussy-cat.
Who never did him any harm,
But killed the mice in his father's barn!...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A CHILD refused to go betimes
To church like other people;
He roam'd abroad, when rang the chimes
On Sundays from the steeple.
His mother said: "Loud rings the bell,
Its voice ne'er think of scorning;
Unless thou wilt behave thee well,
'Twill fetch thee without warning."
The child then thought: "High over head
The bell is safe suspended--"
So to the fields he straightway sped
As if 'twas school-time...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
As I was lying in my bed
I heard the church-bell ring;
Before one solemn word was said
A bird began to sing.
I heard a dog begin to bark
And a bold crowing cock;
The bell, between the cold and dark,
Tolled. It was five o'clock.
The church-bell tolled, and the bird sang,
A clear true voice he had;
The...Read more of this...
by
Marvin Bell
This year,
I'm raising the emotional ante,
putting my face
in the leaves to be stepped on,
seeing myself among them, that is;
that is, likening
leaf-vein to artery, leaf to flesh,
the passage of a leaf in autumn
to the passage of autumn,
branch-tip and winter spaces
to possibilities, and possibility
to God. Even on East 61st Street
in the blowzy city of New York,
someone has planted a gingko
because it...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Mournfully to and fro, to and fro the trees are waving;
What did you say, my dear?
The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a child
Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob—
Yes, my love, I hear.
One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon is braving,
Why not let it ring?
The roses lean down when they hear it, the...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I love thy music, mellow bell,
I love thine iron chime,
To life or death, to heaven or hell,
Which calls the sons of Time.
Thy voice upon the deep
The home-bound sea-boy hails,
It charms his cares to sleep,
It cheers him as he sails.
To house of God and heavenly joys
Thy summons called our sires,
And good men thought thy sacred voice
Disarmed the thunder's fires.
And soon...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
"Lo I, the man who erst the Muse did ask
Her deepest notes to swell the Patriot's meeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter task
For cap and gown to leave my minstrel weeds,"
For yon dull noise that tinkles on the air
Bids me lay by the lyre and go to morning prayer.
Oh how I hate the sound! it is the Knell,
That still...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Of Tolling Bell I ask the cause?
"A Soul has gone to Heaven"
I'm answered in a lonesome tone --
Is Heaven then a Prison?
That Bells should ring till all should know
A Soul had gone to Heaven
Would seem to me the more the way
A Good News should be given....Read more of this...
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