'Tis passing fast! My fireless, lampless room Is a mass of moveless gloom; And without -- a darkness vast, Solemn -- starless -- still! Heaven and earth doth fill. But list! there soundeth a bell, With a mystical ding, dong, dell! Is it, say, is it a funeral knell? Solemn and slow, Now loud -- now low; Pealing the notes of human woe Over the graves lying under the snow! Ah! that pitiless ding, dong, dell! Trembling along the gale, Under the stars and over the snow. Why is it? whence is it sounding so? Is it a toll of a burial bell? Or is it a spirit's wail? Solemnly, mournfully, Sad -- and how lornfully! Ding, dong, dell! Whence is it? who can tell? And the marvelous notes they sink and swell, Sadder, and sadder, and sadder still! How the sounds tremble! how they thrill! Every tone So like a moan; As if the strange bell's stranger clang Throbbed with a terrible human pang. Ding, dong, dell! Dismally, drearily, Ever so wearily. Far off and faint as a requiem plaint Floats the deep-toned voice of the mystic bell Piercingly -- thrillingly, Icily -- chillingly, Near -- and more near, Drearer -- and more drear, Soundeth the wild, weird, ding, dong, dell! Now sinking lower, It tolleth slower! I list, and I hear its sound no more. And now, methinks, I know that bell, Know it well -- know its knell -- For I often heard it sound before. It is a bell -- yet not a bell Whose sound may reach the ear! It tolls a knell -- yet not a knell Which earthly sense may hear. In every soul a bell of dole Hangs ready to be tolled; And from that bell a funeral knell Is often outward rolled; And memory is the sexton gray Who tolls the dreary knell; And nights like this he loves to sway And swing his mystic bell. 'Twas that I heard and nothing more, This lonely Christmas eve; Then, for the dead I'll meet no more, At Christmas let me grieve. Night, be a priest! put your star-stole on And murmur a holy prayer Over each grave, and for every one Lying down lifeless there! And over the dead stands the high priest, Night, Robed in his shadowy stole; And beside him I kneel as his acolyte, To respond to his prayer of dole.