Books › The master's violin, 1906 › scan 236
Scan 236
The master's violin, 1906
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 224. See the scan on archive.org.
1must always be pain. The thunders play over its head, the lightnings burn it, and yet its heart lives on. The rains beat upon it like one river, and still it grows.
3"The years go by and each one brings new hurt, but the tree is made hard and strong. One day there comes a man to look at it, all the straight fine length, the smooth trunk. 'It will do,' he says, and with his axe he chops it down. Do you think it does not hurt the tree? After the long years of fighting, to be cut like that?
5"Then it falls, crashing heavy through the branches to the ground. See, there must always be pain, even at the end. Then more cutting, more bleeding, more heat, more cold. Fine tools—steel knives that tear and split the fibres apart. Do you think it does not hurt? More sun, more cold, still more cutting, tearing, and throwing aside. Then, one day, it is finished, and there is mine Cremona—all the strength, all the beauty, all the pain, made into mine violin!
7"But the end is not yet. God is working with me and mine as well as with mine instrument. As yet, I do not know that it is for me—it comes to me through pain.
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