2007
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!”
–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christmas Bells
The lines above are the last two stanzas of a poem Longfellow wrote in 1863 during the height of the American Civil War. Several years later, in 1872, the poem was incorporated into the Christmas carol we know as I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.
There is a little more to add to the story which I thought I would add this morning.
At the time it was written, Longfellow was still deeply grieving the tragic death of his wife in July of 1861. Her dress caught on fire while using sealing wax on an envelope and despite Longfellow’s efforts which included trying to quench the flames with his body, died the next day from her burns. Longfellow suffered severe burns, to the point that he was unable to attend her funeral. It left deep scars on his face which prevented him from shaving and as a result he wore a full beard until his death in 1882.
After his wife’s death, Longfellow suffered extreme depression, turning at times to using laudanum to ease his sorrow. In the winter of 1863, as he began writing the verses above, he was deeply depressed by his continued grief, his worry over the war that raged between the states, and the fact that his son had been severely wounded in combat.
As he wrote, he heard two church bells pealing for the holiday and he felt his demeanor changed by it, feeling hope that indeed wrong would fail and that right would prevail.
It made for a powerful bit of verse and a memorable carol.
When I first shared this story of Longfellow’s poem back in 2016, it was with the hope that right would somehow prevail. It felt to me at that time that we were facing an upcoming period of darkness. Nine years later, we have staggered through chaos, pandemic, and insurrection. It doesn’t feel as though my fears were unwarranted.
And the same ominous sense of darkness still remains.
Even so, I still maintain the hope– no, the belief— that wrong will fail and that the bells will once more peal out right’s triumph.
I haven’t shared any holiday music thus far this year. I guess I am not in a holiday mood. Certainly not a festive one. But I thought I’d begin to at least make an attempt and share some seasonal music in the coming weeks. This version of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day seemed appropriate for this morning. It’s from The Civil Wars, the fruitful but short-lived collaboration of Joy Williams and John Paul White.
I very much like their interpretation of this classic carol, especially this morning.
Redtree Times 