This is the Nun’s bell: harsh-toned, like their creed,
It clangs its call to worship; on the ear
It smites like Peter’s sword; wakes rage and fear
In those whose love-force is not crushed indeed;
Five hundred years this bell made Nature bleed,
Ringing whilst women found a living grave
In shame of their fair bodies which Jah gave,
Priests said, to lay on an untimely bier
Of passion’s suicide; it did not scream
Aloud to waken when the nightmare shed
Its terrors round their sleep, and in dream
They bribed a phantom God; it might have said:
Die, Sisters, rather than take vows which bind
The body when the soul’s outgrown that mind.

—Miriam Daniell