Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter

What do you associate with the word bells? Jolly sounds or sounds of sadness? In the poem “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” by John Crowe Ransom, bells ring for a young girl who has died. She lived a vibrant life full of imagination, playing among the orchards and the fields. The American Southern poet explores the themes of life and death in this brief elegiac poem told from the perspective of a neighbor who used to see a young girl playing outside his window.

Fig 1: The bells in the poem are a symbol of sounds associated with both life and death.

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”: Background Information

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” is a poem written by the American poet, academic, and literary critic John Crowe Ransom. The poem is from Ransom’s 1924 poetry collection, Chills and Fever.

John Crowe Ransom grew up in Tennessee. He was greatly influenced by the culture and landscape of the American South. It can be assumed that “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” takes place in a small, rural town in America.

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”: Poem

Here is the full poem "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter":

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”: Summary

The speaker, one of John Whiteside’s neighbors, recalls a young girl who was fast and light on her feet. The neighbors look at her dead body, shocked by the stillness that contrasts the quick movement and life that characterized her in their memory.

The neighbors used to watch the playful, spirited girl outside their large windows looking out onto the orchards and nature. The girl feigned battle with her shadow and played by the pond. Her existence is characterized as both spirited and lonesome.

Fig: 2 The mention of the pond and shadow creates a reflective mood, emphasizing the girl’s vivid inner life and the appearance of loneliness.

The speaker personifies a flock of lethargic geese who roam and litter the grass.

Bells ring indicating the girl’s death, and the neighbors are summoned inside of a house. They are confused by how her body lies prim, proper, and still. Her image in death contrasts her former liveliness.

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”: Meaning

The poem “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” conveys the meaning that life is fleeting and death is difficult to comprehend. The poet explores these ideas through the form and literary devices used in the poem.

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”: Analysis of Form

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” is a 20-line elegy written in 5 quatrains.

Elegiac poetry typically celebrates the departed person’s life and addresses the speaker’s grief. While traditional English elegies usually end with consolation for grief, Ransom ends his poem emphasizing the neighbors’ puzzlement.

The poet writes to stress that death is not something easy to process. He writes from the first-person perspective of a neighbor who often saw the young girl outside his window but did not truly know her. By writing an elegy from the perspective of a distanced narrator with an unestablished relationship with the girl, the poet suggests that witnessing death is a striking experience, regardless of whose death it is.

Although the poem is written in neat quatrains, it does not have an established meter. The lack of regular meter reflects the girl’s spontaneity in her life and movements and the unpredictable nature of death.

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”: Rhyme Scheme

The poet uses end rhymes in alternating lines to lend cohesion to the poem and to mimic the lightheartedness of the girl to a certain extent. John Crowe Ransom balances the jolliness of rhymes with the frequent use of half rhymes, which create a repetition of sound and continuity of pattern without making the poem sound too much like a nursery rhyme. Although the poem remembers the girl’s youthfulness, it is told with an air of distance and loneliness congruent with death.

The full rhyme scheme of “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” is ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ.

“Rise” and “skies” are perfect rhymes, as they share the same stressed vowel sound and have similar ending sounds. “Little” and “scuttle” are half rhymes because they share the same ending sounds but do not have the same stressed vowel.

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”: Literary Devices

The poem features several literary devices, including contrast, symbolism, word choice/connotation, simile, personification, alliteration, and irony.

Contrast

The poem is built on the contrast between the motion of life and the stillness of death. The poet emphasizes that while she was alive, the girl was quick on her feet and spontaneously ran around and played in nature. The neighbors are most shocked to see her dead body because she lies so still. The poet uses this contrast to suggest a striking line between life and death that is hard for the human mind to comprehend.

The poet carries this contrast into depicting the birds in the field. In their default state, they are hazily wandering around the grass, but the girl startles them into flight and action. The girl is someone who incites energy into life, and now that her energy is gone, life is much more static.

Symbolism

The bells in the poem symbolize a sound associated with both life and death. The sound of bells can be interpreted in both a positive and negative light. The poem’s title, “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,” initially seems to imply something positive such as bluebells, school bells, or Christmas bells. Bells, in association with youth, evoke a lighthearted, celebratory sound.

However, when conflated with the idea of death, the sound of bells can evoke the heavy ring of church bells rung in remembrance of someone’s death. In the poem, the bells are likely rung in a small town to alert the townspeople to gather. In this case, they are called to gather around the girl’s dead body.

Word Choice/Connotation

In the poem, the poet interestingly refers to the dead girl’s body as “her brown study” (3). This description relates to the somber, serious disposition she takes on in death. By evading the term dead body, the poet suggests that it is as if the girl is just deeply focused or sleeping and will soon come to life again.

Although the poem is about a playful young girl, the poet uses particular descriptions and word choices that characterize her as a powerful warrior. He writes that “her wars were bruited” and “she took arms against her shadow” (5,7). He also describes her as “the little / Lady with rod” that made the geese rise (13-14). The words “bruited,” “took arms against,” and “rod” suggest the girl’s power and fight. Ransom suggests that there is war and fiery personality in this small girl and implies that all that life in her was lost.

Simile and Personification

John Crowe Ransom uses a simile to compare the “lazy geese” to “a snow cloud,” contrasting the ideas of warmth and cold. While the young girl is pictured playing outside in the warmth of summer days, there is a coldness and distance to the poem, which is appropriate because it speaks of the girl’s death. The idea of snow covering the grass lends a certain stillness to the scene and can be understood as the foreshadowing of the girl’s stillness in death.

Nonetheless, the poet maintains a certain lightheartedness in the poem through the personification of the geese as “lazy,” “sleepy,” “proud,” and lethargic people who cry “Alas” when the young girl comes to scare them off. The use of personification gives the nature the girl interacts with a face and personality. As she was often seen outside playing alone, her imagination likely let her find companionship among nature.

Fig 3: In Tennessee, where the poet is from, there are white geese called snow geese.