Russian Poem by K. BALMONT adapted from "The Bells" by E. A. POE. English translation by FANNY S. COPELAND. 

I.
Listen, hear the silver bells! 
Silver bells! 
Hear the sledges with the bells, 
How they charm our weary senses with a sweetness that compels, 
In the ringing and the singing that of deep oblivion tells. 
Hear them calling, calling, calling, 
Rippling sounds of laughter, falling 
On the icy midnight air; 
And a promise they declare, 
That beyond Illusion's cumber, 
Births and lives beyond all number, 
Waits an universal slumber—deep and sweet past all compare. 
Hear the sledges with the bells, 
Hear the silver-throated bells; 
See, the stars bow down to hearken, what their melody foretells, 
With a passion that compels, 
And their dreaming is a gleaming that a perfumed air exhales, 
And their thoughts are but a shining, 
And a luminous divining 
Of the singing and the ringing, that a dreamless peace foretells. 

II.
Hear the mellow wedding bells, 
Golden bells! 
What a world of tender passion their melodious voice foretells! Through the night their sound entrances, 
Like a lover's yearning glances, 
That arise
On a wave of tuneful rapture to the moon within the skies. 
From the sounding cells upwinging 
Flash the tones of joyous singing 
Rising, falling, brightly calling; from a thousand happy throats 
Roll the glowing, golden notes, 
And an amber twilight gloats 
While the tender vow is whispered that great happiness foretells, 
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells, the golden bells! 

III.
Hear them, hear the brazen bells, 
Hear the loud alarum bells! 
In their sobbing, in their throbbing what a tale of horror dwells! 
How beseeching sounds their cry 
'Neath the naked midnight sky, 
Trough the darkness wildly pleading 
In affright, 
Now approaching, now receding 
Rings their message through the night. 
And so fierce is their dismay 
And the terror they portray, 
That the brazen domes are riven, and their tongues can only speak 
In a tuneless, jangling wrangling as they shriek, and shriek, and shriek, 
Till their frantic supplication 
To the ruthless conflagration 
Grows discordant, faint and weak. 
But the fire sweeps on unheeding, 
And in vain is all their pleading 
With the flames! 
From each window, roof and spire, 
Leaping higher, higher, higher, 
Every lambent tongue proclaims:
I shall soon, 
Leaping higher, still aspire, till I reach the crescent moon; 
Else I die of my desire in aspiring to the moon! 
O despair, despair, despair, 
That so feebly ye compare 
With the blazing, raging horror, and the panic, and the glare, 
That ye cannot turn the flames, 
As your unavailing clang and clamour mournfully proclaims. 
And in hopeless resignation 
Man must yield his habitation 
To the warring desolation! 
Yet we know 
By the booming and the clanging, 
By the roaring and the twanging, 
How the danger falls and rises like the tides that ebb and flow. 
And the progress of the danger every ear distinctly tells 
By the sinking and the swelling in the clamor of the bells. 

IV.
Hear the tolling of the bells, 
Mournful bells! 
Bitter end to fruitless dreaming their stern monody foretells! 
What a world of desolation in their iron utterance dwells! 
And we tremble at our doom, 
As we think upon the tomb, 
Glad endeavor quenched for ever in the silence and the gloom. With persistent iteration 
They repeat their lamentation, 
Till each muffled monotone 
Seems a groan, 
Heavy, moaning, 
Their intoning, 
Waxing sorrowful and deep, 
Bears the message, that a brother passed away to endless sleep. 
Those relentless voices rolling 
Seem to take a joy in tolling 
For the sinner and the just 
That their eyes be sealed in slumber, and their hearts be turned to dust 
Where they lie beneath a stone. 
But the spirit of the belfry is a somber fiend that dwells 
In the shadow of the bells, 
And he gibbers, and he yells, 
As he knells, and knells, and knells, 
Madly round the belfry reeling, 
While the giant bells are pealing, 
While the bells are fiercely thrilling, 
Moaning forth the word of doom, 
While those iron bells, unfeeling, 
Through the void repeat the doom:
There is neither rest nor respite, save the quiet of the tomb!