The Story Behind “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”

On CHRISTMAS DAY, 1863, Longfellow wrote a poem searching to capture the discord of his own heart and the world around him…

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was woken from a nap by his beloved wife’s screams. Her dress had caught fire, and Longfellow himself, after trying to extinguish the blaze (first with a rug and then his own body) sustained severe burns. His wife’s burns caused her a torturous death by the next morning. Longfellow was concerned he’d be institutionalized; his grief was so terrible.

Less than two years later, in 1863 his eldest son, 18-year-old Charles, walked out of the family home to board a train to Washington, D.C. to join President Lincoln’s Union army and fight in the Civil War. He left his father alone with four younger siblings.

While dining at home on December 1, 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow received a telegram that his son had been severely wounded four days earlier; he was shot through the left shoulder, with the bullet exiting under his right shoulder blade. The prognosis was possible paralysis and a six-month convalescence.

On CHRISTMAS DAY, 1863, Longfellow, a 57-year-old widowed father of five children, the eldest having been nearly paralyzed in a war his country fought against itself, wrote a poem searching to capture the discord of his own heart and the world around him.

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 today,

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 hearthstones 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.”