Hear the loud Election bells-- Noisy bells! What a world of wonderment their clatter-clash compels! How they jangle, jangle, jangle, On the air of coming night! Like committee-men a-wrangle, And my thoughts are in a tangle Of mixed doldrums and delight. How they chime, chime, chime! In my head there runs a rhyme, And I wish I were but certain what their shindying foretells, What a future I may gather from the voices of the bells-- The jangling and the wrangling of the bells! Now they sound like wedding bells, Golden bells! Meaning mischief in their music to the Moderates and the swells! Their vibrations there's a vox in Which to me sounds like a tocsin. From their molten golden notes, All in tune, What a pleasant sound there floats Like a promise of Progressive Party Votes, Blessed boon! Oh, from Bow to Sadler's Wells, What a gush of Unity voluminously swells. How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the Progress that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells. From the Brixtons, Claphams, Southwarks, Islingtons and Clerkenwells, To the rhyming and the chiming of those bells! Hear the Rate-Alarum bells-- Brazen bells!-- What base tarradiddles their loud turbulency tells! In men's startled ears in spite, How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak They can only shriek, shriek, Through the fog, In a clamorous appealing to the voters to retire That much Progressive Party, which--much like the Rates, or fire-- Climbeth higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a bullying endeavour Now--now to sit, or never In the seat of Gog-Magog! Oh, those bells, bells, bells, What a tale their terror tells Of despair! What reactionary roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the City and Mayfair. Yet the ear it fully knows By their twanging And their clanging How the voting ebbs and flows. Yet the ear distinctly tells In the jangling and the wrangling How Monopoly sinks or swells By the sinking or the swelling in the clangour of those bells-- Beastly bells!-- There is Landlordism, Ground-rents, Dirty Slums, and Drinking Hells In the clamour of those horrid Moderate bells!