On our most recent shopping excursion, my wife shared with me that classic Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem Christmas Bells. I’ve been familiar with the poem for years, more through the variety of interpretations the poem has experienced in song, but the power of Longfellow’s words themselves ring loud and clear. As I sat in the van listening intently once again to those beautiful words penned during the unrest of the American Civil War, I drank deep of the hope Longfellow pens in those final stanzas.
As we head full steam into this Christmas season, may your hearts soar ever upward, set free from the crippling weight of this world below as you meditate on these words (and listen to the AMAZING rendition below by The Branches). Though “hate is strong, / And mocks the song / Of peace on earth, good-will to men” remember that “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; / The Wrong shall fail, / The Right prevail, / With peace on earth, good-will to men.” Amen and amen!
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.”
the deepening ground 