The Old Church Bell Page #2

"The Old Church Bell" is a short, poignant story by Hans Christian Andersen about the life journeys of a church bell. It recounts its creation, installation, ringing at significant events, and finally being replaced and forgotten as time passes. The book elicits empathy for the inanimate object, demonstrating Andersen's incredible storytelling ability to blend humanity with elements of the unseen world.

• Children

								

it stood in the shelter of the church wall in Marbach, once so
elevated, now quite forgotten. The wind roared around it, and could
have readily related the story of its origin and of its sweet
chimes, and the wind could also tell of him to whom he had brought
fresh air when, in the woods of a neighboring country, he had sunk
down exhausted with fatigue, with no other worldly possessions than
hope for the future, and a written leaf from "Fiesco." The wind
could have told that his only protector was an artist, who, by reading
each leaf to him, made it plain; and that they amused themselves by
playing at nine-pins together. The wind could also describe the pale
fugitive, who, for weeks and months, lay in a wretched little
road-side inn, where the landlord got drunk and raved, and where the
merry-makers had it all their own way. And he, the pale fugitive, sang
of the ideal.

For many heavy days and dark nights the heart must suffer to
enable it to endure trial and temptation; yet, amidst it all, would
the minstrel sing. Dark days and cold nights also passed over the
old bell, and it noticed them not; but the bell in the man's heart
felt it to be a gloomy time. What would become of this young man,
and what would become of the old bell?

The old bell was, after a time, carried away to a greater distance
than any one, even the warder in the bell tower, ever imagined; and
the bell in the breast of the young man was heard in countries where
his feet had never wandered. The tones went forth over the wide
ocean to every part of the round world.

We will now follow the career of the old bell. It was, as we
have said, carried far away from Marbach and sold as old copper;
then sent to Bavaria to be melted down in a furnace. And then what
happened?

In the royal city of Bavaria, many years after the bell had been
removed from the tower and melted down, some metal was required for
a monument in honor of one of the most celebrated characters which a
German people or a German land could produce. And now we see how
wonderfully things are ordered. Strange things sometimes happen in
this world.

In Denmark, in one of those green islands where the foliage of the
beech-woods rustles in the wind, and where many Huns' graves may be
seen, was another poor boy born. He wore wooden shoes, and when his
father worked in a ship-yard, the boy, wrapped up in an old worn-out
shawl, carried his dinner to him every day. This poor child was now
the pride of his country; for the sculptured marble, the work of his
hands, had astonished the world.[1] To him was offered the honor of
forming from the clay, a model of the figure of him whose name,
"John Christopher Frederick," had been written by his father in the
Bible. The bust was cast in bronze, and part of the metal used for
this purpose was the old church bell, whose tones had died away from
the memory of those at home and elsewhere. The metal, glowing with
heat, flowed into the mould, and formed the head and bust of the
statue which was unveiled in the square in front of the old castle.
The statue represented in living, breathing reality, the form of him
who was born in poverty, the boy from Marbach, the pupil of the
military school, the fugitive who struggled against poverty and
oppression, from the outer world; Germany's great and immortal poet,
who sung of Switzerland's deliverer, William Tell, and of the
heaven-inspired Maid of Orleans.

It was a beautiful sunny day; flags were waving from tower and
roof in royal Stuttgart, and the church bells were ringing a joyous
peal. One bell was silent; but it was illuminated by the bright
sunshine which streamed from the head and bust of the renowned figure,
of which it formed a part. On this day, just one hundred years had
passed since the day on which the chiming of the old church bell at
Marbach had filled the mother's heart with trust and joy--the day on
which her child was born in poverty, and in a humble home; the same
who, in after-years, became rich, became the noble woman-hearted poet,
a blessing to the world--the glorious, the sublime, the immortal bard,
John Christoper Frederick Schiller!


[1] The Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen.
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