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“Christmas Bells” (The Real Verses by Longfellow)

Every song has a history, but some histories are better known than others. The carol “Christmas Bells,” long a standard of the holiday, is a case in point. Written by the renowned poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas Day 1863, a time when it was not yet clear that the North would win the American Civil War, its original verses contain two stanzas that refer directly to that conflict.

Longfellow’s son Charles had been grievously wounded in battle, but contrary to Longfellow’s gloomy expectations as he wrote these words that his son would die, Charles lived to become a world traveler and amateur ethnographer. For his part, Henry, well aware of both humankind’s baser nature and its angelic possibilities, would go on to translate the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, and to write many memorable poems.

The composer Jean Baptiste Calkin set Longfellow’s words to music in 1872. Here is the poem, with its Civil War verses, long removed from the carol, restored:

Christmas Bells

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!”
Read entire article at Britannica Blog