New Year's Eve, 1913

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.