I Heard the Bells

Oh, what a day.

Fear, excitement, panic, hope, dread...the list goes on and on and on.  Sitting at my computer (at work...shhh) I felt it all rise up within me.  I became suddenly overwhelmed.  How on earth will we go on after this election day?  No one can deny that this campaign process has incited and ignited passion within people.  And not just good passion.  No.  Anger...hatred...vitriol...

I wondered how our nation could move on after all this.  Surely we are more divided than ever before.

Except -

As I let my mind spiral downward a song came on my Dave Barnes (Holiday) Pandora station.  (Yes.  Holiday.  Judge not.)  As I listened I felt tears come to my eyes and peace wash over me.  The carol was a song based on a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas Day, 1863.

Folks, 1863 was the middle of the American Civil War.  A time when our nation was more divided than ever before, a time in which it seemed we could only splinter apart.  Longfellow, the widowed father of six children, had recently learned his oldest child had been severely injured in the war.  So he did what the artists and dreamers do: He put his pain and hope on paper.

I think it applies now, just as surely as then.

Here is his poem (emphasis mine):

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!"