MILLENNIUM PEAL: THE VERY WORD IS LIKE A BELL

"For though the day be never so longe,

At last the belles ringeth to evensonge."

Passetyme of Pleasure by Stephen Hawes (1509)

"Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,

Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh."

Hamlet Act III Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1601)

"I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

That summons thee to heaven or to hell."

Macbeth Act II Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1606)

"And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Meditation from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne (1624)

"...the old church tower,

whose bells, the poor man's music, rang

From morn to evening..."

Frost at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798)

"Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!"

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats (1820)

"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light:

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true."

In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1850)

"The air broke into a mist with bells."

The Patriot by Robert Browning (1855)

"What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns."

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen (1917)

The Nine Tailors - plot centres on the bells of a Fenland church

by Dorothy L Sayers (1934)

"The bells, the bells..."

Charles Laughton as Quasimodo in the film of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), based on the novel by Victor Hugo

"By roads `not adopted', by woodlanded ways,

She drove to the club in the late summer haze,

Into nine o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells

And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells."

A Subaltern's Love-Song by John Betjeman (1945)

"Those bloody bells..."

Look Back In Anger by John Osborne (1956)

"The Christmas bells that ring out,

Are the clanging chimes of doom."

Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid (1985)