I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

One of America's greatest poets is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The year1860 found Longfellow happy in his life, enjoying a widening recognition, and elated over the election of Abraham Lincoln. The following year the Civil War began. On July 9, 1861 Longellow's wife, Fanny, was near an open window sealing locks of her daughter's hair, using sealing wax. Suddenly her dress caught fire and engulfed her with flames. Her husband, sleeping in the next room, was awakened by her screams. As he desperately tried to put out the fire and save his wife, he was severely burned on his face and hands. Fanny died the next day. Longfellow's burns would not even allow him to attend Fanny's funeral. His white beard, which so identified with him, was one of the results of the tragedy, the burn scars on his face made shaving almost impossible. In his diary for Christmas Day 1861 he wrote, "How inexpressibly sad are the holidays." In 1862 the toll of the war dead began to mount and in his diary for that year Longfellow wrote of Christmas, "A merry Christmas say the children, but that is no more for me." In 1863 his son, who had run away to join the Union Army was serverely wounded and returned home in December. There is no entry in Longfellow's diary for that Christmas. But on Chrismas Day 1864, at age 57, Longfellow sat down to try to capture, if possible, the joy of the season. He began: "I heard the bells on Chrismas Day. Their old familiar carols play, And wild and ssweet the words repeat Of peace on earth, good will to men." As he came to the thrid stanza, he was stopped by the thought of the condition of his beloved country. The Battle of Gettysburg was long past. Days looked dark, and he probably asked himself the question, "How can I write about peace on earth, good will to men in this war torn country, where brother fights against brother and father against son?" But he kept writing, and what did he write? 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." It seems as if Longfellow could have been writing for our kind of day. Then, as all of us should do, he turned his thoughts to the One who gives true and perfect peace, and continued writing: "Then peeled the bells more loud and deep; "God is not dead, nor does He sleep! The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men." And so there came into being that marvelous Christmas carol, "I heard the Bells on Christmas Day." (Author unknown) What do you think?