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Long in these walls–long may we greet
Your footfalls, peace and concord sweet!
Distant the day, oh! distant far,
When the rude hordes of trampling war
Shall scare the silent vale;
And where,
Now the sweet heaven, when day doth leave
The air,
Limns its soft rose-hues on the veil of eve;
Shall the fierce war-brand tossing in the gale,
From town and hamlet shake the horrent glare!

Now, its destined task fulfilled,
Asunder break the prison-mould;
Let the goodly bell we build,
Eye and heart alike behold.
The hammer down heave,
Till the cover it cleave:–
For not till we shatter the wall of its cell
Can we lift from its darkness and bondage the bell.

To break the mould, the master may,
If skilled the hand and ripe the hour;
But woe, when on its fiery way
The metal seeks itself to pour.
Frantic and blind, with thunder-knell,
Exploding from its shattered home,
And glaring forth, as from a hell,
Behold the red destruction come!
When rages strength that has no reason,
There breaks the mould before the season;
When numbers burst what bound before,
Woe to the state that thrives no more!
Yea, woe, when in the city’s heart,
The latent spark to flame is blown;
And millions from their silence start,
To claim, without a guide, their own!

Discordant howls the warning bell,
Proclaiming discord wide and far,
And, born but things of peace to tell,
Becomes the ghastliest voice of war:
“Freedom! Equality!”–to blood
Rush the roused people at the sound!
Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood,
And banded murder closes round!
The hyena-shapes (that women were!),
Jest with the horrors they survey;
They hound–they rend–they mangle there–
As panthers with their prey!
Naught rests to hollow–burst the ties
Of life’s sublime and reverent awe;
Before the vice the virtue flies,
And universal crime is law!
Man fears the lion’s kingly tread;
Man fears the tiger’s fangs of terror;
And still the dreadliest of the dread,
Is man himself in error!
No torch, though lit from heaven, illumes
The blind!–Why place it in his hand?
It lights not him–it but consumes
The city and the land!

Rejoice and laud the prospering skies!
The kernel bursts its husk–behold
From the dull clay the metal rise,
Pure-shining, as a star of gold!
Neck and lip, but as one beam,
It laughs like a sunbeam.
And even the scutcheon, clear-graven, shall tell
That the art of a master has fashioned the bell!

Come in–come in
My merry men–we’ll form a ring
The new-born labor christening;
And “Concord” we will name her!–
To union may her heartfelt call
In brother-love attune us all!
May she the destined glory win
For which the master sought to frame her–
Aloft–(all earth’s existence under),
In blue-pavillioned heaven afar
To dwell–the neighbor of the thunder,
The borderer of the star!
Be hers above a voice to rise
Like those bright hosts in yonder sphere,
Who, while they move, their Maker praise,
And lead around the wreathed year!
To solemn and eternal things
We dedicate her lips sublime!–
As hourly, calmly, on she swings
Fanned by the fleeting wings of time!–
No pulse–no heart–no feeling hers!
She lends the warning voice to fate;
And still companions, while she stirs,
The changes of the human state!
So may she teach us, as her tone
But now so mighty, melts away–
That earth no life which earth has known
From the last silence can delay!

Slowly now the cords upheave her!
From her earth-grave soars the bell;
Mid the airs of heaven we leave her!
In the music-realm to dwell!
Up–upwards yet raise–
She has risen–she sways.
Fair bell to our city bode joy and increase,
And oh, may thy first sound be hallowed to peace! [4]

FOOTNOTES:
[1] “I call the living–I mourn the dead–I break the lightning.” These words are inscribed on the great bell of the Minster of Schaffhausen–also on that of the Church of Art near Lucerne. There was an old belief in Switzerland that the undulation of air caused by the sound of a bell, broke the electric fluid of a thunder-cloud.

[2] A piece of clay pipe, which becomes vitrified if the metal is sufficiently heated.

[3] The translator adheres to the original, in forsaking the rhyme in these lines and some others.

[4] Written in the time of the French war.