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Show SABBATH BELLS Sabbath bells! Sabbath bells! What memories throng as your music swells! How the shadows glide forth from the "long, long ago," From the dim, distant past, that more distant still grows, As the years swiftly bear us on Time's silent tide, To the vast mystic ocean - Eternity wide. Sabbath bells! Sabbath bells! How sweetly are pealing your silvery knells! While I list to your sound, from shadowy time, Comes the faint lingering voice of an echoing chime, That long ago rang in my childhood's bright hours, That were passed with the birds' mong brooklets and flowers. Sabbath bells! Sabbath bells! Like a requiem soundeth the slow pealing knells! For e'en while I listen, a shadowy throng, With step slow and mournful, comes silently along, And in the grim hearse, with its black waving plumes, Like a mother's cold form in her life's fairest bloom. Sabbath bells! Sabbath bells! Of scenes passing joyous, that sounding note tells, The funeral cortege hath vanished from sight, As the night giveth way to Aurora's pale light; And the hours so happy still happier grow, But the dark ones are hid in the "long, long ago." J. H. Martineau. |