O BELLS, you suffer not your gods to die;
You draw us by our hearts into your churches.

But I see growing the implacable men,
Who do not feel that God must be absolved
Because of your sweet singing.
I hear their dry hymns, and I see their mallets,
And the learned flames that lick their crucibles.

O bells, we cannot do without your swinging.
The bells of oxen they are barbarous still;
The maidens of our country sing no longer;
The noises of our forests are too often sinister;
And when the scythe has mown the murmuring harvest,
Who shall throw joy in human ears,
If you are there no more, bells full of light,
O bells full of the sky?

You militant voices, flee from positive claws.
As on Good Fridays you were wont of old
To leave your steeples, leave them now again,
But do not go too fast, and look down on our earth.
You will see so many hands stretched up to you
That you will come again to our Town Halls,
To chime the beauty of our new beliefs.

translated by Jethro Bithell