The Doom-Bell

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!