Mingled with the fortune-telling

Gipsy-bands of dreams and fancies,
Which amid the waste expanses

Of the silent land of trances
Have their solitary dwelling.

All else seemed asleep in Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city.

And I thought how like these chimes Are the poet's airy rhymes,

All his rhymes and roundelays,

His conceits, and songs, and ditties,

From the belfry of his brain,

Scattered downward, though in vain,

On the roofs and stones of cities!

For by night the drowsy ear

Under its curtains cannot hear,

And by day men go their ways,
Hearing the music as they pass,
But deeming it no more, alas!
Than the hollow sound of brass.

Yet perchance a sleepless wight,
Lodging at some humble inn
In the narrow lanes of life,
When the dusk and hush of night
Shut out the incessant din

Of daylight and its toil and strife,
May listen with a calm delight
To the poet's melodies,

Till he hears, or dreams he hears,

Intermingled with the song,

Thoughts that he has cherished long;
Hears amid the chime and singing
The bells of his own village ringing,

And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes

Wet with most delicious tears.

Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay
In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Blé,

Listening with a wild delight

To the chimes that, through the night,
Rang the changes from the belfry
Of that quaint old Flemish city.

THE BELFRY OF BRUGES.