THE TENOR'S STORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2368, 20 July 1899, Page 53

THE TENOR'S STORY.

Up in the blue stone belfry,

Alone in the idle space, The last sad peal of the bells rang out,

Each rope in its resting place.

A low wind bathes the steeple,

While softly the ringers' feet, Descending the spiral stairway, Makes solitude complete. Alone in the belfry, dreaming,

The silence round about ( The steeple has the seeming Of a muffled peal ring out.

Dreaming of how the ringer 3

Are folk of another sphere, Who carry aloft on their bell-winged tongues The cares of the folk down here.

Each, with a diff'rent story, swings

In the louvred attic cool, And they jangle together, till earth and sky Of weird-world tales are full.

This is the tenor's story

Down by the Avon side A cottage stands in a garden plot, The home of a winsome bride; Perfumed with lilac and roses, Hedged in with matapo, "With a quaint little seat on a cosy bank, That sloped to a bridge below, From whence in the summer evenings, She'd list to the mingled sounds, And fancy she heard a well-known voice

As the great bells changed their rounds; Impatient of every moment

That parted her thus from he, Who taught the love of her heart to well

Into streams of constancy, Till, when the last sound sped away To the distant hills of snow, She'd wait with the merriest heart and langli By the hedge of matapo To watch for the husband's coming, To set his heart aflame, And hear him tell her, o'er and o'er, How his love was still the same.

But other bells were pealing Away in thai distant town, Where pleasure dwells when the western sun

In the crimson flood goes down; Pealing those distant changes That gladden the soul to hoar;' So, bidding the Avon farewell awhile, She to the west drew near; Drew near, and obtained a welcome, But, alas! in her old resort, For a space, as it were a life-time, The bells were a ringer short. The music still came from the belfry, But Billy would rather it dim, With no one to tell him how grandly they

lang What joy were the bells to him? How came he back to the belfry?

One night when his heart was low, Years after the world had forgotten her i

name, He gat by the matapo; And his Isabel sloocT in the gloaming, A vision of hopeless pain, For she had come out of the western mist To list to him ringing again.

Then straightway he made for the belfryj Glad to his sad heart's core ; And they say that the tenor rang out that night As it never rang out before. Since then he's the chief of the ringers, The folk of another sphere, Who carry aloft on their bell-winged tongues The cares of the folk down here.

r- J. M.

Spreydon, July 1899.