" Christmas Bells"
Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
I
heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their
old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of
peace on earth, good-will to men!
And
thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then
from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"
"No
one has taught us this lesson so compellingly as the great
American poet
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who wrote the
poem that was
destined to become a uniquely American Christmas carol. It was written on a wintry Christmas Eve
during the
Civil War when Longfellow was in his mid-fifties
and
already well known as the author of The Village
Blacksmith and
The Wreck of the Hesperus, although Tales of
a Wayside Inn and Paul Revere’s Ride had not yet been published.
On that Christmas Eve Longfellow was alone and terribly
distracted
because his son was in the army and fighting in the
Civil War.
Responding to a knock on the door the great poet
suddenly found
himself listening to a messenger from Abraham
Lincoln’s
Secretary of War, informing Longfellow that his son
had been killed
in battle.
Hours later and alone with his thoughts Longfellow heard
church bells
signaling midnight on Christmas Eve, whereupon
he went to his desk and wrote the following lines:
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat,
of peace on earth, good will to men.
Relieved to find himself able to write despite his sorrow he
wrote a second stanza for his little poem, reflecting on how
church bells
had been encouraging men for centuries:
I
thought of how this day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rung so long the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
But as the midnight bells stopped ringing, leaving Longfellow
alone with his
sorrow, he became very angry and bitter and
wrote a third
stanza of bitterness and despair, a verse unlike
any other to be
found in a Christmas carol:
Then
in despair I bowed my head,
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."
Beside himself in loneliness Longfellow turned from his desk
and spent the
rest of the night in sorrowful reflection, unable to sleep, until more church bells began ringing with the first
rays
of daylight, heralding Christmas Day. Longfellow returned to
his desk and,
remarkably, wrote one more stanza, one of the
greatest affirmations of faith in western literature:
Then
peeled the bells now loud and deep:
"God is not dead nor doth He sleep,
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."
Years later the poem would be set to music, and a fifth stanza was added
about how the world "revolved from night to day,"
but only the first four stanzas are Longfellow’s. "
narrative
written by Ralph Heller, senior consulting editor of Nevada Journal @
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