“The old is crumbling down—the times are changing”

“The old is crumbling down—the times are changing” is a statement of historical transition that turns the danger embodied by an apple resting on a child’s head into an image of future liberty and renewal.

Wording and Image

The expression sets collapse against change: the old order is not merely challenged but described as crumbling, while the times themselves are moving into a different condition. Its companion image, “From the ruins blooms a fairer life,” carries the thought from destruction to renewal. The language does not deny the ruins; it makes them the ground from which something better may emerge.

The Boy and the Promise of Liberty

The surrounding stage direction gives the expression a precise visual focus. An elder lays a hand on the head of a boy kneeling before him, and the speech identifies that head as the place where the apple lay. From this marked and vulnerable figure, it says, a new and better liberty shall spring. The image makes political hope pass between generations: the boy bears the sign of danger, but is also made the point of origin for a freer future.

Dramatic Emphasis

The lines move from the boy’s past ordeal to the uncertain future of a community, giving the abstract change of the times a visible human emblem. Werner Stauffacher answers the scene by calling attention to the splendor in the boy’s eye. His response reinforces the passage’s turn from peril and ruin toward the prospect of renewed life, without suggesting that the old order has already disappeared.