The poem is a reflection of the death of Slessor's friend Joe Lynch who drowned in Sydney Harbour on 14 May 1927.
[1] In her essay "'Living Backward' : Slessor and Masculine Elegy" (1997) Kate Lilley noted: "Chronologically displaced, “Five Bells” is repositioned and reread as the generically appropriate marker of the premature end of Slessor's career, and also as the aesthetically satisfying rhetorical proof of his poetic achievement.
"[4] The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature stated: "Although the emphasis is on the impermanence of all human relationships and thus the triumph of time (moved by 'little fidget wheels') over life, the affection exposed for the scruffy, unruly, unimportant Irishman gives the poem a tender and human character.
[6] The artist also painted Salute to Five Bells as a mural for the rear foyer area of the Sydney Opera House concert hall in 1973.
The text of the poem is reproduced on a banister in Kenneth Slessor Park in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood.