Gracie wishes you all a Merry Christmas. She loves playing hymns for you every week. On this Christmas Day, she shares one of her favorite carols: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. The lyrics were written by the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Writing for The Gospel Coalition, Justin Taylor provides this background to the carol:
On Friday, December 25, 1863, Longfellow—as a 57-year-old widowed father of six children, the oldest of which had been nearly paralyzed as his country fought a war against itself—wrote a poem seeking to capture the dynamic and dissonance in his own heart and the world he observes around him that Christmas Day.
He heard the Christmas bells ringing in Cambridge and the singing of “peace on earth” (Luke 2:14), but he observed the world of injustice and violence that seemed to mock the truthfulness of this optimistic outlook.
The theme of listening recurs throughout the poem, eventually leading to a settledness of confident hope even in the midst of bleak despair as he recounts to himself that God is alive and righteousness shall prevail.
Within a decade (1872), the poem was put to music by the English organist John Baptiste Calkin for a processional, set to the the melody “Waltham.”
Email readers, please go here to see the video.
1 I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace of earth, good will to men.
2 I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along th’unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
3 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.”
4 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.”
5 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.
Lyrics from hymnary.org
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