Hallowed Church Bell, not for worldly centers
Wast thou made, but for the village small
Where thy voice, as home and hearth it enters,
Blends with lullabies at evenfall.
When a child and in the country dwelling,
Christmas morning was my heaven on earth,
And thy chimes, like angel voices swelling,
Told with joy of my Redeemer’s birth.
Louder still thy joyful chimes resounded,
When on wings of early morning borne,
They proclaimed: Awake with joy unbounded,
Christ arose this blessed Easter morn.
Sweeter even were thy tolls when blending
With the calm of summer eventide
And, as though from heaven above descending,
Bid me cast all grief and care aside.
Hence when now the day is softly ending,
Shadows fall and birds ascend their nest,
Like the flowers my head in silence bending,
I am chanting with my soul at rest:
When at last, O Church Bell, thou art tolling
O’er my grave while loved grieve and sigh,
Say to them, their troubled heart consoling,
He is resting with his Lord on high.
Source: Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark #103
Jens Christian Aaberg (b. Moberg, Denmark, 1877; d. Minneapolis, MN, 1970) immigrated to the United States in 1901. Educated at Grand View College and Seminary in Des Moines, Iowa, he entered the ministry of the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and served congregations in Marinette, Wisconsin; Dwight, Illinois; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Aaberg wrote Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark (1945), translated at least eighty hymns from Danish into English, and served on four hymnal committees. In 1947 King Frederick of Denmark awarded him the Knight Cross of Denmark.
--Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1987
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Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig was the son of a pastor, and was born at Udby, in Seeland, in 1783. He studied in the University of Copenhagen from 1800-1805; and, like some other eminent men, did not greatly distinguish himself; his mind was too active and his imagination too versatile to bear the restraint of the academic course. After leaving the university he took to teaching; first in Langeland, then (1808) in Copenhagen. Here he devoted his attention to poetry, literature, and Northern antiquities. In 1810 he became assistant to his father in a parish in Jutland. The sermon he preached at his ordination, on the subject "Why has the Lord's word disappeared from His house," attracted much attention, which is rarely the case with "pro… Go to person page >
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