Hark! what a boom comes shattering
The dark-red air of Hell!
O’er the sullen plunge of fire-warm
And the strangled shrike and yell!
Boom! Bang! with an iron clang;
‘Tis a midnight tolling bell.
Black yawns a pit-fall downward
From the blessed air and sun,
Where the Slayers of Soul and Body
Make the giant Bell toll on;
Toll! Toll! For each murdered soul
Hurled through the shuddering dam —
Down every moment in darkness,
Through smothering fire and smoke,
Goes another and another,
With each bursting thunder-stroke,
Plunge! boom! And the crash of doom
Joins the Slayers’ heartless joke.
Ye smiling and polished Panders
In gay saloons who dwell;
Ye bloated, purple ruffians,
In your dim predictive hell,
Ring! ring! with a heavy swing
Ye toll the infernal bell.
Grim-hearted and ruthless sextons
To the dark Destroyer sold,
Who slaughter the friend and brother,
And ring their knell, for gold;
Toll! toll! in echo’s roll
Your hovering doom is knolled.
Ha! What a crash articulate,
Over the dying shriek
Of the son ye slowly murdered
Seems your clinging curse to speak;
“Doom! doom! there yet is room,
Doom on your souls to wreak!”
Your gold and silver rattle
Like clods on a coffin-lid;
The ghosts of shroudless victims
In your rustling robes are hid;
Knells! knells are your marriage-bells
And fiends to the feast have slid.
Down crumbles the poor man’s cabin;
His manhood crumbles down
In that bell-clang, little by little,
Till shattered is reason’s crown;
Boom! boom! in lurid gloom
The knells his death-lunge down.
Wealth fades like the dew of morning
In that hell’s far-shooting flash;
Wit’s brain licked out by fire-tongue
Through its hollow chambers crash
Clang! knell! the demon-bell,
And the red waves’ sullen dash.
Pangs of insatiable passion
That can only gnaw and gnaw,
And the sad reproachful beauty
Of the spurned good they saw;
Higher, higher, feed the red fire
That avenges broken Law.
Earth’ breast in ploughed like a furrow,
Still opening and closing still,
With graves for the slain of the Slayers,
Who for wealth and honor kill.
Clang! boom! through solid gloom
They toll with a tireless will.
Then, reeled to their victims’ pit-fall,
With one suspended blow
Down crashed the iron hammer
And shattered down they go!
Yells! groans! then far faint moans,
Come bubbling from below!
The Doom-Bell