Hear the early breakfast bells―― Tiresome bells! Perhaps a Continental trip their harmony foretells, With a guest awake all night, And ringing, ere ’tis light, For change of gold or note, Hours too soon. While the ship he wants to sail by does not float Out of harbour until noon; And in accents most unmusical he yells For coffee to be taken, With toast and eggs and bacon, Up many flights of stairs, while he tells Of twenty other wishes Respecting drinks and dishes, Which I strive to hear in vain, For a train A thousand country visitors propels From Bath or Tunbridge Wells, Who come ringing, ringing, ringing at the bells―― Bells, bells, bells―― And I march away to answer fifty bells. Hear the hasty dinner-bells―― Frantic bells! What a tale of hunger now their turbulency tells! The fires are blazing bright, The cooking is all right, But I scarce can breathe or speak, I’m so bothered all the week―― Don’t have a bit of rest―― Through the clamourous appealing of some gormandising guest, And in mild expostulation to his deaf and frantic ire, I say, “Yessir, yessir, yessir,” To my hard-hearted oppressor, ’Mid the clatter Of the platter, And of dish and glass and spoon, Or an organ, With the owner like a Gorgon, Grinding in the street some doleful tune; Yet the ear it fully knows By the twanging And the clanging, How the dining ebbs and flows, To the jangling of the bells―― Bells, bells, bells―― To the clamour and the clangour of the bells.