Charles Dent Bell was born in Ballymaguigan, County Londonderry, and was educated at the Royal School, Dungannon, Edinburgh Academy and the University of Dublin,Trinity College, He was ordained in the Church of England and held numerous clerical posts in various locations in England. He was a prolific writer of prose and religious verse. His principal volumes of verse were “Voices from the Lakes” (1876); “Songs in the Twilight” (1881); “Songs in many Keys” (1884); and “Poems Old and New” (1893).

Alfred H Miles wrote of him:

"It is somewhat difficult to represent Canon Bell’s poetry within necessary limits, owing to its variety, and to the length of many of its best examples. His poems of nature, “The Rosy Dawn,” “Spring,” and the “Ambleside” group are refreshing, as nature is refreshing. He could scarcely have lived in the Wordsworth country for so long as he did without coming under the influence, if not of Wordsworth, at least of the conditions which influenced Wordsworth. The nature poems are, however, freer from Wordsworthian influences than are the blank verse narrative poems which provoke disadvantageous comparison with those of the master poet. In the “Dream of Pilate’s Wife” we have a dramatic study which won commendation from Whittier, but which, beginning strongly, scarcely sustains its power to the end. One of Canon Bell’s best poems is “In the Escurial,” a poem describing the burial of Alfonso XII., December 10th, 1885. There is true dignity and fine pictorial power in this poem. The subject of death is one which finds felicitous treatment at Canon Bell’s hands, as the poems “Before” and “After,” “Dying Words,” and the Rondeaux here evidence." 

Born:	10 February 1819
Died:	11 November 1898