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.
I am hoping that the last three lines hold true for us going into the future.
I ran the short bit above several years ago on this day, Christmas, in the pivotal year of 2016, just after a new president*** had been elected and there was still uncertainty as to what he would turn out to be.
As for the poem which later became the carol, 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. She caught on fire while using sealing wax on an envelope and despite Longfellow’s efforts died the next day from her burns. Longfellow also suffered severe burns, to the point that he was unable to attend her funeral. It also left scars on his face which prevented him from shaving so that 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 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. This morning, I am filled with the hope that right has indeed prevailed and will continue to do so. Let’s hope that this Christmas day, taking place under the dark clouds of pandemic and disorder, offers us the light of hope on the horizon.
Below is a nice version of the carol with lyrics from the late folksinger and damn fine actor, Burl Ives.
Merry Christmas to you all. May you have a good and loving day. Peace.
Flipping on the car radio this time of year brings torrents of holiday music. Some of the local stations change to an all Christmas format from Thanksgiving to the end of the year and you are bombarded with holiday tunes from every era and every level of quality– good , bad and ugly. Most are happy, solemn, goofy or stickily sentimental.
A few years back I played a version of the song Riu Riu Chiu, an early 16th century song from the Iberian Peninsula that is about the Nativity story. That version was a surprisingly lovely a capella version from the Monkees. I say surprising because it was part of a really bad Christmas episode of their television show from the 1960’s. Watching it made me question my taste in television when I was a kid. But at least this song was there to somewhat make up for the bad parts.
Redtree Times 