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CHAPTER VI
THE CLIMAX: THE BELLS
ACCUSTOMED as we are, from infancy up, to so much “rhyme without reason,” in our nursery jingles and melodies, we associate some of Poe's poetry, remotely, at first blush, with the negroes singing “in the cotton and the corn.” So much sound makes us suspicious of the sense, but a little closer ear appreciates delicate and telling onomatopoetic effects. Liquids and vowels join hands in sweetest fellowship to untie “the hidden soul of harmony.”
As if, at last, to give the world assurance that he had been trifling with rhythm and rime, he wrote The Bells.
The secret of the charm resides in the humanizing of the tones of the bells. It is not personification, but the speak ing in person to our souls. To appreciate this more fully, observe how Rusk in humanizes the sky for us. “Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct, as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is essential.”
Poe made so much of music in his doctrine of poetry, yet he never humanized the notes of a musical instrument, as did Dryden in the Song for Saint Cecilia’ s Day, — [page 136:]
“The soft complaining flute
In dying notes discovers
The woes of hopeless lovers,
Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute.”
Or, —
“Sharp violins proclaim
Their jealous pangs and desperation,
Fury, frantic indignation,
Depth of pains and height’of passion,
For the fair, disdainful dame.”
He took the common bells, — the more praise for his artistic judgment, — and rang them through all the diapason of human sentiment.
If we have imagined a closer correspondence between expression and conception, in the previously considered poems, than really exists, there can be no doubt on that point, even to the mind of the wayfaring man, in reading The Bells.
If it be thought that the poet could harp on only one theme, let the variety of topic in The Bells protest.
Again, Poe's doctrine of “rhythm and rhyme” finds its amplest verification in The Bells. Reason and not “ecstatic intuition,” led him to conclude that English versifi cation is exceedingly simple, that “one tenth of it, possibly, may be called ethereal; nine tenths, however, appertain to the mathematics; and the whole is included within the limits of the commonest common-sense.”
It must be believed that Poe appropriated, with the finest artistic discernment, the vitalizing power of rhythm and rime, and nowhere with more skill than in The Bells. It is the climax of his art on its technical side.
Read the poem and think back over the course of the development of the poet's art-instincts. [page 137:]
I.
Hear the sledges with the bells —
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation [[sic]] that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
II.
Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells [page 138:]
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
III.
Hear the loud alarum bells —
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now — now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet [[Yes]] the ear distinctly tells,[page 139:]
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells —
Of the bells —
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!
IV.
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,
Rolls
A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells! [page 140:]
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells —
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells —
Of the bells, bells, bells —
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells —
Of the bells, bells, bells —
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells —
Bells, bells, bells —
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
With this perfect example of the informing power of sentiment in poetry sounding in our ears, we may conclude this study by recurring to the dictum, —
“For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form and doth the body make,”
feeling that we are entitled to write Edgar Allan Poe down as Poet and Artist.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - JFP99, 1899] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - The Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry (J. P. Fruit) (The Climax: The Bells)