Mrs. Shaw then wrote the words, "The heavy iron bells." Poe immediately completed the stanza which now reads: Hear the tolling of the bells,-- Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people--ah, the people-- They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone! They are neither man nor woman,-- They are neither brute nor human,-- They are Ghouls; And their king it is who tolls,-- And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls a paean from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the paean of the bells! And he dances, and he yells, Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the paean of the bells, Of the bells. The other stanzas were written afterward. There is music in these words; but do not think that the music is all. Underneath is the deep harmony of human suggestion, as in the lines, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone. Now let us see if we can represent by musical notes the meter in which this poem is written. We must remember that a punctuation mark at the end of a line often makes a complete pause, which is represented in music by a rest. In music a rest has the same effect in completing a bar as the corresponding note. Here are the first two lines: [Illustration: (music) Hear the sledg-es with the bells, Sil-ver bells!] In the two following lines the commas in the middle of the line stand for rests, like the punctuation at the end of the first line; or if we wish we can make the words "time, time, time," three longer notes. It all depends on how we pronounce them: [Illustration: (music) Keep--ing time, time, time, in a sort of Ru-nic rhyme.] CHAPTER XIII POE'S LATER YEARS Poe had the hardest time of his life when he was at New York, living in that little cottage at Fordham, where his poor wife died. He was always borrowing money, from sheer necessity, to keep himself and his wife from starvation. Once while in New York he was so hard pressed that Mrs. Clemm went out to see if she could not get work for him. She went to the office of Nathaniel P. Willis, who was the editor and proprietor of _The Mirror_. Willis was then starting _The Evening Mirror_, and said he would give Poe work. So the poet came; he had his little desk in the corner, and did his work meekly and regularly,--poor hack work for which he was paid very little.