Living through the turbulence of the early 20th century and marked by her own struggles with love, health, and melancholy, Sara Teasdale would turn to nature and sensory experiences as metaphors for human emotion. Bells, with their ability to cut through silence and stir listeners regardless of distance, provided her with a perfect symbol of how moments of beauty or feeling can resonate beyond themselves.
Whether between states of emotion, stages of life, or even the passage between the earthly and the transcendent, bells to the poet are keepers of time and an ephemeral reminder that an individual's existence is momentary. Time marches on to the sound of tolling bells – a permanence in a transient world.
Image: Portrait photograph of Sara Teasdale (1884-1933).
"Bells"
Sara Teasdale
At six o'clock of an autumn dusk
With the sky in the west a rusty red,
The bells of the mission down in the valley
Cry out that the day is dead.
The first star pricks as sharp as steel—
Why am I suddenly so cold?
Three bells, each with a separate sound
Clang in the valley, wearily tolled.
Bells in Venice, bells at sea,
Bells in the valley heavy and slow—
There is no place over the crowded world
Where I can forget that the days go.
Cover image: A bell hangs above the historic St. Mary's Mission in Stevensville, Montana.
