The Dunchurch Bells.*

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 5084, 21 September 1891, Page 4

The Dunchurch Bells.*

Archibald Gordon, in Scribner s Magazine.] In stops and swells The Dunchnreh bells Went pealing, pealing, pealing; In mead and fen The Dnnchttrch men Heard them pealing, pealing, pealing ; And ships that sailed far out at soa And the sailor-lad from the north countree, When the wanton west wind whistled free, Heard them pealing, pealing, pealing. Now the North Sea leaps l>oth tierce and

free Where the bells went pealinz, pealing ; And the keen keels glide Through the tumbling tide Where the bells went pealing, pealing. Sorest of all, in mead or fen, No longer do the Dnnchttreh men With scythe or sickle listen when The Dnnchureh bells go pealing. Bat the fisherman shooting his net in the bay Hears them pealing, pealing, pealing : And the sailor-lad from the north countree Hears them pealing, pealing, pealing : And when the flaming Cromer Light Flares out aflasti at the fall of night You may hear (an' you listen with cars

aright) The Dunchnreh bells still pealing.

* Where the German Ocean, driven by the North Sea, year after year eats away the east coast of England, there are underneath its waters, villages, some of actual existence and some > mere legend, over which the tides have bbed and Bowed for centuries. Among these is the pastoral village of Dunchurch, in the belfry ot which hung a chime of bells—the pride of East Anglia. The Dunchurch ringers had no peers, and on windy nights the coasting voyagers, far out at sea, heard, fitfully, the music that they made. Dunchurch is now itself far out at sea.