Reader's Blog; Hymn

                   "When the hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my Future radiant shine With sweet hopes of thee and thine!" 

-The message that I interpreted when I read this poem was that the bells were ringing because it was a funeral, mostly because Poe's poems are mostly about death. But then I got thinking  that maybe it can just be about church bells ringing to indicate that mass had ended or is about to start, and the speaker could be a sinner that is going (or went) to repent about their sins and now feels forgiven by God. That's what it seems to me.