Analysis of The Old Town Bells
The old town bells are ringing
In the hand that hallows day,
And I am standing on a step
Above the little cay
That slips beneath the fishing pier
And drops into the deep,
To which my mind
Has wandered
In its loves so long asleep
They ring from out a tower
In a park some blocks away,
And in their staid recital,
I am pleased to hear them play
I sense in them an unshed tear
That they were meant to wake,
And in a swell of sentiment,
My heart begins to break
They seem as if
A thing I dreamed
That moved me long ago
Whose purpose then
I could not guess
And value did not know
They bid me down
A path too fair,
A way too dear to dare,
For I am old and cannot risk
The beauty that is there
Yet I will share
A thought with you
That I fear to advance -
It is that though
We have but love,
We live love’s full expanse
We are the portrait and the poem,
The song that brings a tear –
The essence of a miracle,
That gives us meaning here
We are God’s fragile masterpiece,
His imagery, and art, the faithful hand
That sculpts His form in every tender heart
We are the waking of the mind,
The writing of the tome –
The looking back upon the bay,
As we are going home
Nostalgia is more than a sigh
That we gather the past:
It is the pith of our dear soul
And all it has amassed
Through each decision,
Joy, and pain
That we in wonder hear
Upon the sounding of the bells,
When God to us is near
I pass the tower on my way,
And silently it stands,
And I am mulling
How its clock is round
With moving hands
I hear the bells within myself,
I hear the bells that chime
Within my writing of these lines,
Your reading of the rhyme.
Scheme | ABXB CDEX D XB FB GHXHXX I XX I XG G XG GXJ IXJ XGF K XXX EL BL XM XM XX KXC BNA XN XO XO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111110 0011101 01110101 010101 11010101 010101 1111 110 0111101 1111010 0011101 0011010 1111111 1101111 110111 00011100 110111 1111 0111 111101 1101 1111 010111 1111 0111 011111 11110101 010111 1111 0111 111101 1111 1111 111101 110100010 011101 01010100 111101 1111010 1100010101 11110100101 11010101 010101 01010101 111101 01011101 111001 110111011 011101 11010 101 110101 01010101 111111 11010111 010011 01110 11111 1101 1101011 110111 01110111 110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,690 |
Words | 409 |
Sentences | 2 |
Stanzas | 27 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 1, 2, 2, 6, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 1, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2 |
Lines Amount | 63 |
Letters per line (avg) | 20 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 46 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 12 |
About this poem
Having Wandered the Waterfront Of a Small Southern Town, I Came to Believe That We Are the Poetry, Elicited by the Ringing of Town Bells (Southport, NC, May 6, 2015)
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"The Old Town Bells" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/117700/the-old-town-bells>.
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