For Four Guilds: Iv. The Bell-ringers Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCCDDEEBBFF GHIIEEJJKLMM BBNNEEAAEEOO AAEEPPQQRRST| The angels are singing like birds in a tree | A |
| In the organ of good St Cecily | B |
| And the parson reads with his hand upon | C |
| The graven eagle of great St John | C |
| But never the fluted pipes shall go | D |
| Like the fifes of an army all a row | D |
| Merrily marching down the street | E |
| To the marts where the busy and idle meet | E |
| And never the brazen bird shall fly | B |
| Out of the window and into the sky | B |
| Till men in cities and shires and ships | F |
| Look up at the living Apocalypse | F |
| - | |
| But all can hark at the dark of even | G |
| The bells that bay like the hounds of heaven | H |
| Tolling and telling that over and under | I |
| In the ways of the air like a wandering thunder | I |
| The hunt is up over hills untrod | E |
| For the wind is the way of the dogs of God | E |
| From the tyrant's tower to the outlaw's den | J |
| Hunting the souls of the sons of men | J |
| Ruler and robber and pedlar and peer | K |
| Who will not harken and yet will hear | L |
| Filling men's heads with the hurry and hum | M |
| Making them welcome before they come | M |
| - | |
| And we poor men stand under the steeple | B |
| Drawing the cords that can draw the people | B |
| And in our leash like the leaping dogs | N |
| Are God's most deafening demagogues | N |
| And we are but little like dwarfs underground | E |
| While hang up in heaven the houses of sound | E |
| Moving like mountains that faith sets free | A |
| Yawning like caverns that roar with the sea | A |
| As awfully loaded as airily buoyed | E |
| Armoured archangels that trample the void | E |
| Wild as with dancing and weighty with dooms | O |
| Heavy as their panoply light as their plumes | O |
| - | |
| Neither preacher nor priest are we | A |
| Each man mount to his own degree | A |
| Only remember that just such a cord | E |
| Tosses in heaven the trumpet and sword | E |
| Souls on their terraces saints on their towers | P |
| Rise up in arms at alarum like ours | P |
| Glow like great watchfires that redden the skies | Q |
| Titans whose wings are a glory of eyes | Q |
| Crowned constellations by twelves and by sevens | R |
| Domed dominations more old than the heavens | R |
| Virtues that thunder and thrones that endure | S |
| Sway like a bell to the prayers of the poor | T |
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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