I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day
I love Christmas music…I confess. It is not always incredible cool to bump your “Christmas in Hollis” whilst driving down Allessandro, but you know what, neither am I. I usually pick up a few new albums every year and this year my favorite is Christmas Songs by Jars of Clay (remember Jars of Clay? Apparently they are still making albums). Aside from some cool new songs like “Winter Skin” and “Hibernation Day” there is a hauntingly beautiful version of “I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day.” In all the years that I have listened to this song, I don’t think I have ever heard this song. I always just heard Sinatra and the big orchestra and the jingle bells and it became a cute Christmas song. The Jars of Clay version caused me to look up the song and read about it.
I didn’t know that it was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
I didn’t know that it was written during the Civil War
I didn’t know there were verses that I had not heard before.
Read this in the context of a person growing tired of war, a person whose son had just suffered severe wounds in battle.
- I heard the bells on Christmas day
- Their old familiar carols play,
- And mild 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.
- 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 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.
- 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.”
- 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.
I could give you my take…my thoughts on war, on angst, on the exhaustingly long road to the goal of this poem’s refrain, but instead I just leave you with the hope of the sublime chant:
“Peace on earth, Good will to men” (and women)
Merry Christmas.
