I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
214

Text: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
Music: John Baptiste Calkin (1827–1905)
Tune name: WALTHAM

As Christmas bells peal their traditional carols, a moment of despair overcomes one who hears them. With such hate and conflict in the world, how can this listener trust the message of “Peace on earth, good will to men”? But the song of hope and promise swells even louder: “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s original poem, published in 1867, was seven stanzas long. The Christmas carol version omits the original verses four and five, which show his grief and frustration over the American Civil War. These omitted verses describe how the awful sounds of war overpower the song of the Christmas bells:

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 hearthstones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Verse three of the original poem has been made the final verse of the carol, so that two positive verses conclude the carol and leave us with a feeling of faith and optimism.