Mmm...
Low in the hollow,
Deep in the tree,
Someone is crying
Where no one can see

Mmm...
Under the shell,
The root remembers
The orphan’s bell

The fever came with a candle mouth,
It breathed on every door
It took the hands that baked the bread,
Then came back for more

By harvest moon, the village road
Was quiet as a grave
And one small child with ash-stained sleeves
Had no one left to save

No mother’s shawl, no father’s coat,
No lamp kept in the pane
Only the black tree on the hill
Was waiting in the rain

So up he climbed with shaking knees,
Too tired to even call
And wrapped his arms around the bark
As if it were a wall

He did not ask for paradise,
He did not ask for bread
He only cried into the trunk:
“Where do I lay my head?”

O ring, ring low,
The orphan’s bell
Through root and bone,
Through rain and dell

O ring, ring low,
Where sorrow fell
No child shall cry alone
Beneath the orphan’s bell

The Lachryma stood dark and still,
Its branches bare and wide
It drank the tears from his little face
And held them deep inside

Then from the heartwood, far below,
A sound began to rise
Not loud enough to wake the dead,
But loud enough for eyes

For windows opened one by one,
And sleepers turned in bed
The widower heard it in his cup,
The midwife raised her head

The baker’s wife, who had no child,
Lit up her lantern flame
And whispered, “That is not the wind
The tree has learned his name.”

They found him curled beneath the roots,
With frost upon his hair
The bell still trembling in the wood,
Like grief becoming prayer

O ring, ring low,
The orphan’s bell
Through root and bone,
Through rain and dell

O ring, ring low,
Where sorrow fell
No child shall cry alone
Beneath the orphan’s bell

Open the door,
Set down the light
Someone is lost
In the arms of night

Open the door,
Listen well
Love may arrive
As a mourning bell

They say the bell does not ring for death
It rings for what death leaves behind

Not for the grave
Not for the ghost

But for the empty chair,
The untouched bowl,
The little shoes beside the door

And if you hear it,
you must go

Even if the night is bitter
Even if the child is not your own

They took him in, they washed his hands,
They warmed his feet with wool
They set a bowl before his chair
And let the silence fill

No one spoke of charity,
No one spoke of shame
For every house the fever spared
Still carried someone’s name

And in the years that followed him,
Whenever grief was small
A lonely child beneath the tree
Could make the village call

Now in that northern village,
When a baby loses kin
They do not ask whose blood it bears
Before they take it in

They listen when the black tree groans,
They listen through the snow
For Lachryma has roots below
Where lonely sorrows go

Some hear a bell, some hear a breath,
Some hear a mother’s tune
Some hear a cradle rocking slow
Beneath a winter moon

O ring, ring low,
The orphan’s bell
Through root and bone,
Through rain and dell

O ring, ring low,
Where sorrow fell
No child shall cry alone
Beneath the orphan’s bell

O ring, ring low,
Through every wall
Through every house
That feared the call

O ring, ring low,
And softly tell:
A village is a home
When it answers to the bell

Mmm...
Low in the hollow,
Deep in the tree,
Someone was crying
And someone came to see

Mmm...
Tender and frail,
The bell keeps ringing
When all other voices fail