A booming, thunderous, yet mellow sound! a grand, solemn, sonorous swing of full and weighty rhythm, striking the air with deep, slowly measured resonance like the rolling of close cannon! Awake, all ye people!--Awake to prayer and praise! for the Night is past and sweet Morning reddens in the east, ... another Day is born,--a day in which to win God's grace and pardon,--another wonder of Light, Movement, Creation, Beauty, Love! Awake, awake!
Be glad and grateful for the present joy of life,--this life, dear harbinger of life to come! open your eyes, ye drowsy mortals, to the divine blue of the beneficent sky, the golden beams of the sun, the color of flowers, the foliage of trees, the flash of sparkling waters!-- open your ears to the singing of birds, the whispering of winds, the gay ripple of children's laughter, the soft murmurs of home affection,--for all these things are freely bestowed upon you with each breaking dawn, and will you offer unto God NO thanksgiving?-- Awake! Awake! the Voice you have yourselves set in your high Cathedral towers reproaches your lack of love with its iron tongue, and summons you all to worship Him the Ever-Glorious, through whose mercy alone you live!
To and fro,--to and fro,--gravely persistent, sublimely eloquent, the huge, sustained, and heavy monotone went thudding through the stillness,--till, startled from his profound sleep by such loud, lofty, and incessant clangor, Alwyn turned on his pillow and listened, half-aroused, half-bewildered,--then, remembering where he was, he understood; it was the great Bell of the Dom pealing forth its first summons to the earliest Mass. He lay quiet for a little while, dreamily counting the number of reverberations each separate stroke sent quivering on the air,--but presently, finding it impossible to sleep again, he got up, and drawing aside the curtain looked out of the window of his room, which fronted on the Platz. Though it was not yet six o'clock, the city was all astir, --the Rhinelanders are an early working people, and to see the sun rise is not with them a mere fiction of poesy, but a daily fact. It was one of the loveliest of lovely spring mornings--the sky was clear as a pale, polished sapphire, and every little bib of delicate carving and sculpture on the Dom stood out from its groundwork with microscopically beautiful distinctness.
And as his gaze rested on the perfect fairness of the day, a strange and sudden sense of rapturous anticipation possessed his mind,--he felt as one prepared for some high and exquisite happiness,--some great and wondrous celebration or feast of joy! The thoughts of death, on which he had brooded so persistently during the past yester-eve, had fled, leaving no trace behind,--only a keen and vigorous delight in life absorbed him now. It was good to be alive, even on this present earth! it was good to see, to feel, to know! and there was much to be thankful for in the mere capability of easy and healthful breathing!