THE BELLS OF LIMERICK.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 150, 17 March 1876, Page 12

THE BELLS OF LIMERICK.

— ++ — The oM bells that Inmg in the towers of the Limerick Cathedral were made by a young Italian after many years of patient labor. He wasproud of his work, and when they were purchased by the prior of a neighboring convent near the Lake of Conio, the artist invested the profits of the sale in a pretty villa on the margin of the lake, where he could hear their Angelus music wufted from the convent cliff across the waters at morning, noon, and night. Here he intended to pass his life ; but this happiness was denied him. In one of those feudal broils which, whether civil or foreign, are tho undying worm in a, foreign land, he suffered the loss of his all ; and when the storm passed, he found himself without homo, family, friends, and fortune. The convent had been razed to the ground, and tho cliefs d'ceuvre of his handiwork, the tuneful chime whoso music had charmed his life, had been carried away to a foreign land. He became a wanderer. His hair grew white and his heart grew withered before he again found, a resting place. In all these years of bitter desolation, the memory of the music of his hells never left him ; he heard it in the forest and in the crowded city, on the sea and by the banks of the quiet stream in the basin of the lull? ; ho heard it by day ; and when night came, and troubled sleep, it \>hispeied to him soothingly of peace and happiness. One day he met a mariner from over the sei, who told him a story of a wondrous chime of bells he had heard in Ireland. An intuition told the artist that they were his bells. He journeyed and voyaged thither, sick and weary, and sailed up the Shannon. The ship came to an anchor in the port near Limerick, and he took passage in a small boat for the purpose of reaching tho city. Before him the tall steeple of St. Mary's lifted its turreted head above the mist and smoke of the old town. He leaned back wearily, yet with a happy light beaming from his eyes. The angels were whispering to him that his bells were there. Ho prayed: "Oh! let them sound mo a loving welcome. Just one note of greeting, O bells! and my pilgrimage is done. i It was v beautiful evening. The air was like that of his own Italy in the sweetest time of the year, the death of the spring. The bosom of the rher was like a broad mirror, reflecting the patines of bright gold that flecked the bluo sky, the towers, and the streets of the old town in its clear depths. The lights of the city danced upon the wavelets that rippled from the boat as she glided along. Suddenly tho stillness was broken. From St. Mary's tower there came a shower of silver sound, filling the air with music- The boatmen rested on their oars to listen. The old Italian crossed his arms and fixed his streaming eyes upon the tower. The sound of his bells bore to his heart all tLe memories of the past : home, friends, kindred, all. At last he was happy — too happy to speak, too happy to breathe. When the rowers sought to ni'ouse him, his face was upturned to the tower, but his eyes were closed. The poor stranger had .breathed his la»t. His own chefs d'oeuvre had rung his "passing-bell." — Emily V. Battey, in ' Harper's Magazine ' for January.