Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news

Hath but a losing office, and his tongue

Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,

Remember'd tolling a departing friend.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part II. Act i. Sc. 1.

But the sound of the church-going bell

These valleys and rocks never heard;

Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a knell,

Or smiled when a Sabbath appear'd.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.

Each matin bell, the Baron saith,

Knells us back to a world of death.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Christabel. Part ii.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;

In a cowslip's bell I lie.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Tempest. Act v. Sc. 1.

There was a sound of revelry by night,

And Belgium's capital had gather'd then

Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright

The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men.

A thousand hearts beat happily; and when

Music arose with its voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,

And all went merry as a marriage bell.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iii. Stanza 21.

Silence that dreadful bell: it frights the isle

From her propriety.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act ii. Sc. 3.

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time

But from its loss.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night thoughts. Night i. Line 55.

That all-softening, overpowering knell,

The tocsin of the soul,—the dinner bell.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto v. Stanza 49.