The peals

 This has got me thinking about the word 'to peal'. It sounds like a sound! And it turns out it comes from the French, like so many of our words. It is the shortened form of 'appeal' from the French 'appel', so 'a call'. So when bells peal out, we are being called. Not necessarily to church, but something in us is clearly, subtly, being called to, or being called out of us. 

Middle English pele also had the sense of "an accusation, an appeal" (15c.), and apele for "a ringing of bells" is attested from mid-15c.

Extended sense of "loud ringing of bells" is first recorded 1510s; subsequently it was transferred to other successions of loud sounds (thunder, cannon, mass shouts or laughter). Meaning "set of bells tuned to one another" is by 1789.

                                                                 (Online Etymological Dictionary)

So, you get the collocations 'a peal of thunder', 'peals of laughter'. And many others. 

In Macbeth, Shakespeare brings out the sinister connotations of the word:

Ere the bat hath flown
His cloister’d flight, ere, to black Hecate’s summons
The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums
Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.

(Act III, scene 2)

The metaphor 'rung night's yawning peal' is striking. It is not the peal of bells summoning to worship, or celebrating a wedding, or even marking somone's passing. It sounds like it is summoning to the end of time itself, night like a great abyss opening up, a gaping mouth.