Sabbath Bells

A poem for Easter Day

Ive often on a sabbath day
Where pastoral quiet dwells
Lay down among the new mown hay
To listen distant bells
That beautifully flung the sound
Upon the quiet wind
While beans in blossom breathed around
A fragrance oer the mind
A fragrance & a joy beside
That never wears away
The very air seems deified
Upon a sabbath day

So beautiful the flitting wrack
Slow pausing from the eye
Earths music seemed to call them back
Calm settled in the sky
& I have listened till I felt
A feeling not in words
A love that rudest moods would melt
When those sweet sounds was heard
A melancholly joy at rest
A pleasurable pain
A love a rapture of the breast
That nothing will explain

A dream of beauty that displays
Imaginary joys
That all the world in all its ways
Finds not to realize
All idly stretched upon the hay
The wind-flirt fanning bye
How soft how sweetly swept away
The music of the sky
The ear it lost & caught the sound
Swelled beautifully on
A fitful melody around
Of sweetness heard & gone

I felt such thoughts I yearned to sing
The humming airs delight

That seemed to move the swallows wing
Into a wilder flight
The butterflye in wings of brown
Would find me where I lay
Fluttering & bobbing up & down
& settling on the hay
The waving blossoms seemed to throw
Their fragrance to the sound
While up & down & loud & low
The bells were ringing round

EP I 295