Such a construction would drastically change the tone of the line, its implications for the whole poem, and the interpreter's entire pattern of strategies in reading. This reading has the advantage of referring to the town's universally noted involvement in the sheer routines of living. It is possible to read each stanza as primarily positive or negative in tone and feeling as Cummings moves from the sympathetic lovers to the antagonistic and imperceptive commonality who oppose the lovers' childlike simplicity. Once such a description is made, we quickly see that the sound of the bells changes with the positive or negative tone of the stanza. The statement is natural, logical, harmonious.
Unity is violated, logic falls away, and harmony is cracked.
This harmony is sounded by the bells, and it is symbolized by the bells. The harmony which Cummings sees in anyone and noone is the essential, inevitable, and absolutely necessary harmony of bell and clapper. The bell has a symbolic force equivalent to the Chinese yang and yin . Cummings' highly conscious and perceptive naivete is the mode in which be tells a fable with at least two concurrent themes. So it would be a lyric in praise of non-conformity.