A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/Sonnet—The Broken Bell (Charles Baudelaire)
Sonnet.—THE BROKEN BELL.
'Tis bitter-sweet on winter nights to note,
Beside the palpitating fire reclined,
The chimes, across the fogs, upon the wind,
Now loud, now low, now near and now remote.
What recollections on that music float!
Blessed the bell that through the darkness blind
Sends honest greetings, consolations kind,
And solemn warnings from its lusty throat.
'Tis like a wakeful soldier,—mine, alas!
The soul-bell in me, can but give one cry,
Like that, a wounded soldier—o'er whom pass
Riders and horses, and around whom lie
The dead and dying in a tangled mass—
Utters, unable or to move or die.