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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  The Vesper Bells

C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Vesper Bells

By Ivan Kozlov (1779–1840)

Translation of Nathan Haskell Dole

O VESPER bells, O vesper bells!

My heart with sweet remembrance swells.

Ye bring me back to days of yore;

I see my father’s home once more,

As when I left it for all time,

And heard your last, your parting chime.

The bright days of my traitorous spring,

How little profit did ye bring!

How many, once so young and gay,

No longer see the light of day.

Their sleep is deep where silence dwells,—

They do not hear the vesper bells!

Lay me too in the damp cold ground!

A song of melancholy sound

The breeze above my grave shall sigh;

Another singer shall pass by,—

Not I but he it is who tells

The meaning of the vesper bells!