Chapter XIX THE ANGELUS FRANCES L. MACE Ring soft across the dying day Across the amber-tinted bay, The meadow flushed with sunset ray, Angelus! The day of toil seems long ago Angelus! While through the deepening vesper glow, Far up where holy lilies blow, Thy beckoning bell notes rise and flow, Angelus! Through dazzling curtains of the west We see a shine in roses dressed, Angelus! Oh, has an angel touched the bell, For now upon the parting swell All sorrow seems to sing farewell, There falls a peace no words can tell, Angelus! Chapter XX THE CURFEW BELL The hated curfew bell was first rung in England in Winchester Cathedral. Curfew is from the French couvre-feu (cover fire), and it was William the Conqueror's order that all fires and lights must be extinguished by eight o'clock in the evening. The stars are out, my whole has ceased, Save for my first, that yelping beast, My second hate him more than I. WILLIAM BELLAMY. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plöds his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. GRAY, Elegy in a Country Churchyard. THE SONG OF THE CURFEW FELICIA HEMANS Hark! from the dim church tower, Sadly 'twas heard by him who came. And who might not see his own hearth's flame Sadly and sternly heard As it quenched the wood fire's glow, Which had cheered the board, with the mirthful word, And the red wine's foaming flow Wo, for the wanderer then In the wild deer's forests far! No cottage lamp to the haunts of men And wo for him, whose wakeful soul, Would have lived o'er some immortal scroll, And yet a deeper wo, For the watchers by the bed, Where the fondly loved, in pain lay low, For the mother, doomed unseen to keep Darkness, in chieftain's hall! Darkness in peasant's cot! While Freedom under that shadowy pall, Oh! the fireside's peace we well may prize, Heap the yule fagots high, Till the red light fills the room! |