"Five Bells" is Australian poet Kenneth Slessor's autobiographical reflection on grief, time, and memory. The poem's speaker can hardly believe that his friend Joe (who drowned in Sydney Harbor) is really dead and gone. Joe remains alive in the speaker's memory yet painfully out of reach, beyond the border that divides life from death. Grief, this poem suggests, leaves mourners in a strange limbo, unable to reach the dead they remember so clearly. Slessor first published this poem in his 1939 collection Five Bells: XX Poems.

• Read the full text of “Five Bells”

• “Five Bells” Summary

• “Five Bells” Themes

  • 

    Death and Grief

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-129
  • 

    Time vs. Memory

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-129
  • 

    Meaning and Meaninglessness

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 98-108
    • Lines 115-118

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Five Bells”

  • Lines 1-7

    Time that is ...
    ... between five bells.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 8-12

    Deep and dissolving ...
    ... upside-down in water.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 13-19

    Why do I ...
    ... its fury heard.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 20-26

    Are you shouting ...
    ... the pygmy strait—

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 27-37

    Nothing except the ...
    ... Five bells.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 38-49

    Then I saw ...
    ... so you'd found.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 50-62

    But all I ...
    ... Five bells.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 63-69

    In Melbourne, your ...
    ... ecstasies of rectitude.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 70-82

    I thought of ...
    ... that I obtained..."

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 83-97

    In Sydney, by ...
    ... and sculptured stone.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 98-108

    Where have you ...
    ... of an Idea.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 109-114

    I felt the ...
    ... feel your hand.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 115-118

    If I could ...
    ... hear your voice?

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 119-129

    I looked out ...
    ... Five bells.

    

    

    

    

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• “Five Bells” Symbols

  • 

    The Ringing Bells

    Where this symbol appears in the poem:

    • Lines 3-7: “Between the double and the single bell / Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells / From the dark warship riding there below, / I have lived many lives, and this one life / Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.”
    • Lines 9-10: “Five bells / Coldly rung out in a machine's voice.”
    • Lines 23-24: “only bells, / Five bells, the bumpkin calculus of Time.”
    • Line 37: “Five bells.”
    • Line 62: “Five bells.”
    • Lines 127-128: “bells, / Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.”
    • Line 129: “Five bells.”

• “Five Bells” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Apostrophe

    

    

    

    

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    Where apostrophe appears in the poem:

    • Lines 13-16: “Why do I think of you, dead man, why thieve / These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought / Anchored in Time? You have gone from earth, / Gone even from the meaning of a name;”
    • Lines 20-22: “Are you shouting at me, dead man, squeezing your face / In agonies of speech on speechless panes? / Cry louder, beat the windows, bawl your name!”
    • Line 25: “Your echoes die, your voice is dowsed by Life,”
    • Lines 29-31: “And unimportant things you might have done, / Or once I thought you did; but you forgot. / And all have now forgotten”
    • Lines 33-36: “Your gaunt chin and pricked eye, and raging tales / Of Irish kings and English perfidy, / And dirtier perfidy of publicans / Groaning to God from Darlinghurst.”
    • Lines 40-49: “The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark, / So dark you bore no body, had no face, / But a sheer voice that rattled out of air / (As now you'd cry if I could break the glass), / A voice that spoke beside me in the bush, / Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind, / Of Milton, melons, and the Rights of Man, / And blowing flutes, and how Tahitian girls / Are brown and angry-tongued, and Sydney girls / Are white and angry-tongued, or so you'd found.”
    • Lines 58-61: “There's not so many with so poor a purse / Or fierce a need, must fare by night like that, / Five miles in darkness on a country track, / But when you do, that's what you think.”
    • Lines 63-74: “In Melbourne, your appetite had gone, / Your angers too; they had been leeched away / By the soft archery of summer rains / And the sponge-paws of wetness, the slow damp / That stuck the leaves of living, snailed the mind, / And showed your bones, that had been sharp with rage, / The sodden ecstasies of rectitude. / I thought of what you'd written in faint ink, / Your journal with the sawn-off lock, that stayed behind / With other things you left, all without use, / All without meaning now, except a sign / That someone had been living who now was dead:”
    • Lines 86-87: “But you were living backward, so each night / You crept a moment closer to the breast,”
    • Lines 98-108: “Where have you gone? The tide is over you, / The turn of midnight water's over you, / As Time is over you, and mystery, / And memory, the flood that does not flow. / You have no suburb, like those easier dead / In private berths of dissolution laid— / The tide goes over, the waves ride over you / And let their shadows down like shining hair, / But they are Water; and the sea-pinks bend / Like lilies in your teeth, but they are Weed; / And you are only part of an Idea.”
    • Lines 110-111: “The night you died, I felt your eardrums crack, / And the short agony, the longer dream,”
    • Lines 114-118: “But I was blind, and could not feel your hand. / If I could find an answer, could only find / Your meaning, or could say why you were here / Who now are gone, what purpose gave you breath / Or seized it back, might I not hear your voice?”

  • Imagery

    

    

    

    

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    Where imagery appears in the poem:

    • Lines 8-12: “Deep and dissolving verticals of light / Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells / Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water / Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats / In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water.”
    • Lines 32-34: “your coat with buttons off, / Your gaunt chin and pricked eye, and raging tales / Of Irish kings and English perfidy,”
    • Lines 38-42: “I heard the thunder / Tumble, and felt the talons of the rain / The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark, / So dark you bore no body, had no face, / But a sheer voice that rattled out of air”
    • Lines 44-45: “A voice that spoke beside me in the bush, / Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind,”
    • Lines 55-57: “When blank and bone-white, like a maniac's thought, / The naphtha-flash of lightning slit the sky, / Knifing the dark with deathly photographs.”
    • Lines 64-69: “they had been leeched away / By the soft archery of summer rains / And the sponge-paws of wetness, the slow damp / That stuck the leaves of living, snailed the mind, / And showed your bones, that had been sharp with rage, / The sodden ecstasies of rectitude.”
    • Lines 70-71: “what you'd written in faint ink, / Your journal with the sawn-off lock”
    • Lines 83-84: “by the spent aquarium-flare / Of penny gaslight on pink wallpaper,”
    • Lines 109-110: “I felt the wet push its black thumb-balls in, / The night you died, I felt your eardrums crack,”
    • Lines 120-128: “At waves with diamond quills and combs of light / That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand / In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze, / And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys / Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each, / And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard / Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal / Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells, / Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.”

  • Metaphor

    

    

    

    

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    Where metaphor appears in the poem:

    • Line 2: “my Time, the flood that does not flow”
    • Line 7: “who lives between five bells.”
    • Lines 8-12: “Deep and dissolving verticals of light / Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells / Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water / Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats / In the air,”
    • Line 18: “the ports of space”
    • Lines 20-21: “squeezing your face / In agonies of speech on speechless panes”
    • Line 24: “Five bells, the bumpkin calculus of Time.”
    • Line 25: “Your echoes die, your voice is dowsed by Life,”
    • Line 26: “There's not a mouth can fly the pygmy strait—”
    • Line 39: “felt the talons of the rain”
    • Lines 52-53: “And fifty mouths, it seemed, were out that night, / And in each tree an Ear was bending down,”
    • Lines 55-57: “When blank and bone-white, like a maniac's thought, / The naphtha-flash of lightning slit the sky, / Knifing the dark with deathly photographs.”
    • Lines 64-69: “they had been leeched away / By the soft archery of summer rains / And the sponge-paws of wetness, the slow damp / That stuck the leaves of living, snailed the mind, / And showed your bones, that had been sharp with rage, / The sodden ecstasies of rectitude.”
    • Lines 83-84: “the spent aquarium-flare / Of penny gaslight on pink wallpaper,”
    • Lines 86-87: “But you were living backward, so each night / You crept a moment closer to the breast,”
    • Line 97: “These funeral-cakes of sweet and sculptured stone.”
    • Line 101: “And memory, the flood that does not flow.”
    • Lines 102-103: “You have no suburb, like those easier dead / In private berths of dissolution laid—”
    • Line 109: “I felt the wet push its black thumb-balls in,”
    • Lines 113-114: “But I was bound, and could not go that way, / But I was blind, and could not feel your hand.”
    • Lines 120-124: “At waves with diamond quills and combs of light / That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand / In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze, / And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys / Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,”

  • Parallelism

    

    

    

    

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    Where parallelism appears in the poem:

    • Line 3: “Between”
    • Line 4: “between”
    • Lines 10-12: “Night and water / Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats / In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water.”
    • Lines 15-16: “gone from earth, / Gone even from the meaning of a name”
    • Line 17: “Yet something's there, yet something forms its lips”
    • Line 22: “Cry louder, beat the windows, bawl your name!”
    • Line 28: “shoved away,” “sucked away”
    • Lines 30-31: “you forgot. / And all have now forgotten”
    • Line 32: “your”
    • Line 33: “Your”
    • Line 38: “I saw,” “I heard”
    • Line 41: “bore no body, had no face”
    • Lines 47-49: “how Tahitian girls / Are brown and angry-tongued, and Sydney girls / Are white and angry-tongued,”
    • Line 67: “stuck,” “snailed”
    • Line 68: “showed”
    • Lines 72-73: “all without use, / All without meaning”
    • Lines 81-82: “differant things / And differant curioes”
    • Lines 98-100: “The tide is over you, / The turn of midnight water's over you, / As Time is over you,”
    • Line 104: “The tide goes over, the waves ride over you”
    • Line 109: “I felt”
    • Line 110: “I felt”
    • Lines 111-112: “And the short agony, the longer dream, / The Nothing that was neither long nor short;”
    • Lines 113-114: “But I was bound, and could not go that way, / But I was blind, and could not feel your hand.”

  • Repetition

    

    

    

    

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    Where repetition appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-2: “Time that is moved by little fidget wheels / Is not my Time, the flood that does not flow.”
    • Line 3: “bell”
    • Line 4: “bells”
    • Lines 6-7: “I have lived many lives, and this one life / Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells”
    • Line 9: “Five bells”
    • Line 23: “nothing, nothing”
    • Lines 23-24: “bells, / Five bells”
    • Line 34: “perfidy”
    • Line 35: “perfidy”
    • Line 37: “Five bells.”
    • Line 40: “dark”
    • Line 41: “dark”
    • Lines 62-62: “   / Five bells.”
    • Line 101: “the flood that does not flow.”
    • Lines 127-128: “bells, / Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.”
    • Line 129: “Five bells.”

• “Five Bells” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Fidget wheels
  • Flood
  • The Cross
  • Profitless lodgings
  • Flukes of thought
  • Bawl
  • Bumpkin
  • Dowsed
  • Pygmy strait
  • Slops
  • Your gaunt chin and pricked eye
  • Perfidy
  • Publicans
  • Slab-dark
  • Naphtha-flash
  • Leeched
  • The sodden ecstasies of rectitude
  • "Photoes of many differant things"
  • Curioes
  • The spent aquarium-flare / Of penny gaslight
  • Graveyard mason
  • Private berths of dissolution
  • Sea-pinks
  • Thumb-balls
  • Quills
  • (Location in poem: Line 1: “Time that is moved by little fidget wheels”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Five Bells”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “Five Bells” Speaker

• “Five Bells” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “Five Bells”

• More “Five Bells” Resources

  • External Resources

    • A Brief Biography — Learn more about Slessor's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.

    • The Poem Set to Music — Listen to a musical version of the poem.

    • The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.

    • Slessor's Legacy — Learn about how Slessor's work continues to influence Australian artists.

    • The Story of Joe Lynch — Learn more about Joe Lynch, the friend Slessor addresses in this elegy.

  • LitCharts on Other Poems by Kenneth Slessor

    • Beach Burial

    • Out of Time

    • Sleep

    • William Street

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