"The Bells" overwhelms with its sounds. In order to give poetic form to the ringing of the bells, it uses onomatopeia among other resources (such as insistent rhyme). An onomatopeia is a word that mimics a real-world sound, such as "meow" for a kitten's purr. In Poe's poem, we find several words that may qualify as examples of onomatopeia, such as "clanging" (which mimics a metallic sound), "twanging" (ditto) and "tintinabulation", which tries to mimic the sharp sound of the silver bells.