Can You Hear The Bells?

Two years prior, Henry tried, he did, but the fire was too hot, too far, too strong.

By the morrow, the smoke, the flames and the life of his wife, were quenched.

The burns to his face so severe he was unable to attend his wife’s funeral. That day he went from celebrated poet, happily married father of six to a burn-scarred widower, fearing for his sanity on account of his grief.

The telegraph read that his oldest boy, Charles, Second Lieutenant in Lincoln’s Union Army, had been shot through.

He traveled with haste to his son. The prognosis grim. Paralysis, probable.

On Christmas day, 1863, fifty-seven-year-old, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, heard Christmas bells ringing, while son lay near dying, words floated from singing, “Peace on earth, good will to men.”

But, canons thundered, drowning the sound.

In despair, he bowed his head, “There is no peace on earth,” he said; “For hate is strong, and mocks the song, of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

But through the blast and through the night, the bells pealed 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.”

They still echo.

The bells.

The bells are ringing, still.

Can you hear them?

Above the rage, the hate, the divide?

Listen my brothers, my sisters, my family, listen…

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.”

Can You Hear The Bells?