Longfellow has several tender references to church bells. He sets the Bells of Lynn to ring a requiem of the dying day. He mounts the lofty tower of "the belfry old and brown" in the market place of Bruges-- Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour, But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower. From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high; And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky. Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times, With their strange unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes. Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir; And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar. Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain; They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again. Who does not remember Father Prout's lyric on "The Bells of Shandon"? We venture to quote the four delicious verses _in extenso_-- With deep affection and recollection I often think of the Shandon bells, Whose sounds so wild would, in days of childhood, Fling round my cradle their magic spells-- On this I ponder where'er I wander, And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee; With thy bells of Shandon, That sound so grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee. I have heard bells chiming, full many a chime in Tolling sublime in cathedral shrine; While at a glib rate brass tongues would vibrate, But all their music spoke naught to thine; For memory dwelling on each proud swelling Of thy belfry knelling its bold notes free, Made the bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee. I have heard bells tolling "old Adrian's mole" in Their thunder rolling from the Vatican, With cymbals glorious, swinging uproarious In the gorgeous turrets of Notre Dame; But thy sounds were sweeter than the dome of Peter Flings o'er the Tiber, pealing solemnly. Oh! the bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee. There's a bell in Moscow, while on tower and kiosko, In St. Sophia the Turkman gets, And loud in air, calls men to prayer, From the tapering summits of tall minarets, Such empty phantom I freely grant them, But there's an anthem more dear to me-- It's the bells of Shandon That sound so grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee. "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day," in Gray's "Elegy," the best known, and, in its own line, the best poem in the English language. More dramatic is Southey's story of the warning bell that the Abbot of Aberbrothock placed on the Inchcape Rock. James Russell Lowell has a beautiful thought in his little poem "Masaccio"--