Full many a year in the village church,
Above the world have I made my home;
And happier there, than if I had hung
High up in air in a golden dome;
For I have tolled
When the slow hearse rolled
Its burden sad to my door;
And each echo that woke,
With the solemn stroke,
Was a sigh from the heart of the poor.
I know the great bell of the city spire
Is a far prouder one than such as I;
And its deafening stroke, compared with mine,
Is thunder compared with a sigh;
But the shattering note
Of his brazen throat,
As it swells on the Sabbath air,
Far oftener rings
For other things
Than a call to the house of prayer.
Brave boy, I tolled when your father died,
And you wept when my tones pealed loud;
And more gently I rung when the lily-white dame
Your mother dear lay in her shroud:
And I rang in sweet tone
The angels might own,
When your sister you gave to your friend;
Oh! I rang with delight,
On that sweet summer night,
When they vowed they would love to the end!
But a base foe comes from the regions of crime,
With a heart all hot with the flames of hell;
And the tones of the bell you have loved so long
No more on the air shall swell:
For the people's chief,
With his proud belief
That his country's cause is God's own,
Would change the song,
The hills have rung
To the thunder's harsher tone.
Then take me down from the village church,
Where in peace so long I have hung;
But I charge you, by all the loved and lost,
_Remember the songs I have sung_.
Remember the mound
Of holy ground
Where your father and mother lie
And swear by the love
For the dead above
To beat your foul foe, or die.
Then take me; but when (I charge you this)
You have come to the bloody field,
That the bell of God, to a cannon grown,
You will ne'er to the foeman yield.
By the love of the past,
Be that hour your last,
When the foe has reached this trust;
And make him a bed
Of patriot dead,
And let him sleep in this holy dust.[6]
"WE COME! WE COME!"