The Clock-Tower Bell / Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

Patrick Roque, Manila City Hall,

midnight (detail). CC BY-SA 4.0,

  Wikimedia Commons.

The Clock-Tower Bell

Say not, sad bell, another hour hath come,
Bare for the record of a world of crime;
Toll, rather, friend, the end of hideous Time,
Wherein we bloom, live, die, yet have no home!

Bell, laurels would we o’er thy pulsing twine,
And sing thee songs of triumph with glad tears,
If to the warring of our haggard years
Thy clang should herald peace along the line!

~~
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (1861-1926)
from Along the Shore, 1888

[Poem is in the publid domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop biography