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Chapter XIX

THE ANGELUS

FRANCES L. MACE

Ring soft across the dying day
Angelus!

Across the amber-tinted bay,

The meadow flushed with sunset ray,
Ring out, and float, and melt away.

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
Angelus-

We see a shine in roses dressed,
And lifted high in vision blest,
Our very heart throb is confessed,

Angelus!

Oh, has an angel touched the bell,
Angelus!

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.

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The stars are out, my whole has ceased,
And silence reigns in earth and sky.

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,
The deep, slow curfew's chime!
A heavy sound unto hall and bower,
In England's olden time!

Sadly 'twas heard by him who came.
From the fields of his toil at night,

And who might not see his own hearth's flame
In his children's eyes make light.

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
Until that sullen, booming knell
Flung out from every fane,
On harp, and lip, and spirit fell,
With a weight and with a chain.

Wo, for the wanderer then

In the wild deer's forests far!

No cottage lamp to the haunts of men
Might guide him as a star.

And wo for him, whose wakeful soul,
With lone aspiring filled,

Would have lived o'er some immortal scroll,
While the sounds of earth were stilled.

And yet a deeper wo,

For the watchers by the bed,

Where the fondly loved, in pain lay low,
And rest forsook the head.

For the mother, doomed unseen to keep
By the dying babe her place,
And to feel its flitting pulse, and weep
Yet not behold its face.

Darkness, in chieftain's hall!

Darkness in peasant's cot!

While Freedom under that shadowy pall,
Sat mourning o'er her lot.

Oh! the fireside's peace we well may prize,
For blood hath flowed like rain,
Poured forth to make sweet sanctuaries
Of England's homes again!

Heap the yule fagots high,

Till the red light fills the room!

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