The Poetry Corner

New Year's Eve, 1913

By Gordon Bottomley

O, Cartmel bells ring soft to-night, And Cartmel bells ring clear, But I lie far away to-night, Listening with my dear; Listening in a frosty land Where all the bells are still And the small-windowed bell-towers stand Dark under heath and hill. I thought that, with each dying year, As long as life should last The bells of Cartmel I should hear Ring out an aged past: The plunging, mingling sounds increase Darkness's depth and height, The hollow valley gains more peace And ancientness to-night: The loveliness, the fruitfulness, The power of life lived there Return, revive, more closely press Upon that midnight air. But many deaths have place in men Before they come to die; Joys must be used and spent, and then Abandoned and passed by. Earth is not ours; no cherished space Can hold us from life's flow, That bears us thither and thence by ways We knew not we should go. O, Cartmel bells ring loud, ring clear, Through midnight deep and hoar, A year new-born, and I shall hear The Cartmel bells no more.