
The Bells Are Ringing And The Choirs Are Singing. “Peace On Earth Good Will Towards Men” But There Is No Peace.
On Friday, December 25, 1863 the world acclaimed literary critic and celebrated poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poignant poem seeking to capture the dynamics and dissonance in his own heart and the world he observed around him that Christmas day. The poem, “Christmas Bells,” would soon be turned into a song of hope, of faith and of trust and retitled “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day.”
Two years earlier, Longfellow heard the frantic screams of his wife as she ran into his study, and who was engulfed in flames. Her dress had somehow caught on fire. In desperation, Longfellow grabbed a heavy rug and tried to extinguish the fire, but to no avail. His wife died the next morning. He himself was severely burned and couldn’t attend his wife’s funeral.
THE CHRISTMAS CRISIS
One December 1, 1863 America was in the middle of a war against itself when Longfellow received a telegraph with the news that his son had been severely wounded by a Confederate bullet. Taking a train to Washington D.C. to help tend his son’s wounds, the highly acclaimed poet was in despair as Christmas Day approached.
As he wrote the impactful poem that Christmas morning in 1863, Longfellow at first could only express in his mind and from his pen words of injustice and violence from the world he lived in that seemed to mock the jubilant sound of Christmas bells and the chants of peace on Earth coming from the voices of church choirs:
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 toward men.
But, as it so often happens in moments of deep darkness and utter despair, the right words came to the poet’s mind and flowed triumphantly from his pen in contradiction to the hopelessness, sadness and despair:
Then rang the bells more loud and deep,
God is not dead nor does He sleep.
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will toward men. Read the rest of this entry »