Sweet silence after bells!

deep in the enamour’d ear

soft incantation dwells.

Filling the rapt still sphere

a liquid crystal swims,

precarious yet clear.

Those metal quiring hymns

shaped ether so succinct:

a while, or it dislimns,

the silence, wanly prinkt

with forms of lingering notes,

inhabits, close, distinct;

and night, the angel, floats

on wings of blessing spread

o’er all the gather’d cotes

where meditation, wed

with love, in gold-lit cells,

absorbs the heaven that shed

sweet silence after bells.