But age will come on with its winter, though happiness hideth its snows;
And if youth has its duty of labour, the birthright of age is repose: 
And thus from that love-sweetened toil, which the heavens had so
  prospered and blest,
The old Campanaro will go to that vine-covered cottage to rest;
But Paolo is pious and grateful, and vows as he kneels at her shrine,
To offer some fruit of his labour to Mary the Mother benign—­
Eight silver-toned bells will he offer, to toll for the quick and the
  dead,
From the tower of the church of her convent that stands on the cliff
  overhead.

’Tis for this that the bellows are blowing, that the workmen their
  sledge-hammers wield,
That the firm sandy moulds are now broken, and the dark-shining bells
  are revealed;
The cars with their streamers are ready, and the flower-harnessed necks
  of the steers,
And the bells from their cold silent workshop are borne amid blessings
  and tears. 
By the white-blossom’d, sweet-scented myrtles, by the olive-trees
  fringing the plain,
By the corn-fields and vineyards is winding that gift-bearing, festival
  train;
And the hum of their voices is blending with the music that streams on
  the gale,
As they wend to the Church of our Lady that stands at the head of the
  vale.

Now they enter, and now more divinely the saints’ painted effigies
  smile,
Now the acolytes bearing lit tapers move solemnly down through the
  aisle,
Now the thurifer swings the rich censer, and the white curling vapour
  up-floats,
And hangs round the deep-pealing organ, and blends with the tremulous
  notes. 
In a white shining alb comes the abbot, and he circles the bells round
  about,
And with oil, and with salt, and with water, they are purified inside
  and out;
They are marked with Christ’s mystical symbol, while the priests and the
  choristers sing,
And are bless’d in the name of that God to whose honour they ever shall
  ring.

Toll, toll! with a rapid vibration, with a melody silv’ry and strong,
The bells from the sound-shaken belfry are singing their first maiden
  song;
Not now for the dead or the living, or the triumphs of peace or of
  strife,
But a quick joyous outburst of jubilee full of their newly-felt life;
Rapid, more rapid, the clapper rebounds from the round of the bells—­
Far and more far through the valley the intertwined melody swells—­
Quivering and broken the atmosphere trembles and twinkles around,
Like the eyes and the hearts of the hearers that glisten and beat to the
  sound.

But how to express all his rapture when echo the deep cadence bore
To the old Campanaro reclining in the shade of his vine-covered door,
How to tell of the bliss that came o’er him as he gazed on the fair
  evening star,
And heard the faint toll of the vesper bell steal