I heard the bells on Christmas Day

with
[SHRYOCK]
WALTHAM

I. Background

In the years prior to the composition of one of his most famous poems, a poem questioning the existence of peace in the world, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) personally experienced times of great distress, especially starting in 1861. First, he witnessed the descent of his country into a Civil War. In his journal for 28 January 1861, he offered his assessment of the situation:

Six states have left the Union, led by South Carolina. President Buchanan is an antediluvian, an après-moi-le-déluge President, who does not care what happens, if he only gets safely through his term. We owe the present state of things mainly to him. He has sympathized with the disunionists. It is now too late to put the fire out. We must let it burn out.[1]

His observation of bells tolling on 22 February 1861 foreshadowed the growing unrest and the absence of peace:

Washington’s birthday. Heard the bells ringing at sunrise, through the crimson eastern sky. They had a sad sound, reminding me of the wretched treason in the land.[2]

Then the dawn of war, 12 April 1861:

News comes that Fort Sumter is attacked. And the war begins! Who can forsee the end?[3]

But in July he suffered a terrible loss of another kind, much closer to home. His journal went silent, but his brother, Samuel Longfellow (1819–1892), later recalled the event:

The break in the journal marked a break in his very life; an awful chasm that suddenly, and without the slightest warning, opened at his feet. On the ninth of July his wife was sitting in the library, with her two little girls, engaged in sealing up some small packages of their curls which she had just cut off. From a match fallen upon the floor, her light summer dress caught fire. The shock was too great, and she died the next morning. Three days later, her burial took place at Mount Auburn. It was the anniversary of her marriage-day; and on her beautiful head, lovely and unmarred in death, some hand had placed a wreath of orange blossoms. Her husband was not there—confined to his chamber by the severe burns which he had himself received.

These wounds healed with time. Time could only assuage, never heal, the deeper wounds that burned within. This terrible bereavement, made more terrible by the shock of the suddenness and the manner of it, well-nigh crushed him. Friends gathered round, and letters of sympathy poured in upon him from every quarter, as the sad intelligence flashed over land and sea. He bore his grief with courage and in silence. Only after months had passed could he speak of it; and then only in fewest words.[4]

This was his second wife to die unexpectedly. His first, Mary Storer Potter, died 29 November 1835, one month after suffering a miscarriage. One year after Fanny’s death, 10 July 1862, Henry noted his quiet pain:

I can make no record of these days. Better leave them wrapped in silence. Perhaps some day God will give me peace.[5]

Likewise, the war continued to rage, which added to his unrest. He wrote on 1 Sept. 1862:

Yesterday we had a report of a great battle at Manassas, ending in defeat of the Rebels. The moon set red and lowering; and I thought in the night of the pale, upturned faces of young men on the battlefield, and the agonies of the wounded; and my wretchedness was very great. Every shell from the cannon’s mouth bursts not only on the battlefield, but in far-away homes, North or South, carrying dismay and death. What an infernal thing war is! Woe to him by whom it cometh![6]

The war became much less distant and far more personal when his oldest son, Charles, enlisted in the Union army in March of 1863 at age 18. Longfellow seemed resigned to his son’s status, writing, “He is where he wants to be, in the midst of it all.”[7] But Charles’ service would be short-lived. On 27 November 1863, while fighting in the battle of New Hope Church, Virginia, he was perilously wounded. Henry learned of his son’s injury on Dec. 1 and was able to reach his son in Washington D.C. on Dec. 5, where he was told Charles was shot “through both shoulders—an Enfield ball entering under the left shoulder-blade, and passing directly through the back, taking off one of the spinal processes, and passing out under the right shoulder-blade. A wonderful escape.”[8]

His son Charles would mend and survive, but Henry suffered another profound loss on 19 May 1864, when his former classmate at Bowdoin College, fellow writer, and lifelong friend Nathaniel Hawthorne died of an abdominal illness. Longfellow attended the funeral and wrote a tribute, simply called “Hawthorne” (“How beautiful it was, that one bright day”). He sent his poem to the widow, Sophia, who wrote back:

We are both now entered fully into the worship of sorrow, and comprehend all its conditions. . . . The poem that you send me has such an Eolian delicacy, sweetness, and pathos, that it seems a strain of music rather than written words. It has in an eminent degree the unbroken melody of your verse. The picture of the scene you have now made immortal.[9]

Since the dawn of war and the deaths of his wife and his longtime friend, Christmas was a bittersweet experience for Henry Longfellow. On Christmas Day, 1861, he wrote in his journal, “How inexpressively sad are all holidays! But the dear little girls had their Christmas tree last night; and an unseen presence blessed the scene.”[10] In 1862, he remarked again at his own sadness juxtaposed against his daughters’ wellness: “‘A merry Christmas,’ say the children, but that is no more, for me. Last night the little girls had a pretty Christmas tree.”[11] The Christmas of 1863 was spent tending to his wounded son. On December 28, he wrote to a friend:

Since I wrote you, I have been through a great deal of trouble and anxiety. My oldest boy, not yet twenty, is a lieutenant of cavalry in the Army of the Potomac. Early in the summer he was taken down with camp fever, and did not rejoin his regiment till September. In the last battle on the Rapidan he was shot through both shoulders with a rifle-ball, and had a very narrow escape of it. He is now at home, and doing very well. The two anxious journeys to the army to bring him back, together with the waiting and watching, have not done me much good, nor left me much time for other things.[12]

The Christmas of 1864, following the death of Hawthorne, and as the war still raged, he wrote his famous poem “I heard the bells on Christmas Day,” and he wrote a Noël poem in French for his friends, Mr. & Mrs. Louis Agassiz.[13] At the end of the year, 31 December 1864, in a moment of reflection, he wrote in his journal:

I looked out of the window at night and saw all the trees covered and bent down with snow, and thought of Richter’s “New Years Eve of an Unhappy Man,” and knew that I should not “wake and find it a dream.”[14]

Longfellow never remarried. In 1879, eighteen years after Fanny’s death, he wrote a heartfelt tribute to his wife’s memory, called “The Cross of Snow”[15]. He did find some solace in the end of the war, which he noted in his journal for 7 April 1865: “In the afternoon comes news that Lee has surrendered. So ends the Rebellion of the slave-owners!”[16]

II. Publication

Longfellow’s poem, “I heard the bells on Christmas Day” (“Christmas Bells”), is sometimes romantically but erroneously dated 25 December 1863 by various commentators, when his son was recovering from his battle wounds, but in the official, annotated edition of his Poetical Works, Riverside Edition, vol. 3 (1886), the poem was dated 25 December 1864. The poem was also dated 1864 in the Appendix to his brother’s official biography, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3 (1891). A manuscript of the poem is not listed in either of the major archives of his papers, at Harvard University and the Longfellow House. Some popular collections claim the text was presented to the Sunday school of the Unitarian Church of the Disciples in Boston, but the church and its longtime founder-minister, James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) are not mentioned in any capacity in any early biography of Longfellow; without supporting evidence, this detail should be regarded as a myth.

The text was published in Longfellow’s Household Poems (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865 | Fig. 1), and it appeared in other publications that year, including Our Young Folks: An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls, vol. 1, no. 2 (February 1865), p. 123, and in a new edition of his Poetical Works (London: Gall & Inglis, 1865), with a preface dated January 1865. The original text included seven stanzas of five lines. Hymnals and songbooks typically omit the fourth and fifth stanzas, referring to the Civil War.

III. Textual Analysis

The end of each stanza repeats the song of the angels in Luke 2:14 (especially as rendered in the KJV), but the main narrative of the text is of a person who hears a carillon of bells on Christmas Day, proclaiming a message of peace, in contrast to relentless warfare raging in the land. The narrator has a moment of hopeless despair, but the bells respond with a reminder of God’s providence and justice.

The Bible speaks often of God’s prevailing justice in earthly matters. Psalm 37, for example, admonishes readers not to lose hope in the face of adversity: “Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. . . . But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace” (Ps. 37:1–2,11, KJV). Psalm 103:6 says, “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.” Even so, a more perfect, permanent era of peace and justice is yet to come, as promised in Isaiah 9:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light: they who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. . . . For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this (KJV).

A similar promise is repeated in Revelation 21:

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” And he that sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And he said unto me, “Write: for these words are true and faithful.”

IV. Tunes

Longfellow’s poem was first used as a hymn with music in Pure Diamonds (Cleveland: S. Brainards’ Sons, 1872 | Fig. 2), edited by James R. Murray, set to a tune by J.W. Shryock. This tune has not endured.

The tune most commonly associated with Longfellow’s text is WALTHAM, by London organist John Baptiste Calkin (1827–1905). Calkin’s tune was first published in The Hymnary (London: Novello, Ewer & Co., 1872 | Fig. 3), set to “Fling out the banner! Let it float” (here altered as “Uplift the banner!”), by George Washington Doane (1799–1859). It was the second of two tunes intended for the same text.

The pairing of Doane’s text with Calkin’s tune has been repeated many times, up to the end of the twentieth century. The eventual pairing of Longfellow’s text with Calkin’s tune is less clear. This combination appeared as early as 1919 in the Hymnal for American Youth (NY: The Century Co., 1919 | Fig. 4).

Although Longfellow’s poem has been set to many tunes over the last century and a half, Calkin’s has resonated the best, perhaps because of the melodic and harmonic chromaticism, which add musical tension, and the way the melody rises and falls, which gives the tune a strong sense of purpose and direction, or escalation and resolution.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
17 December 2019

Footnotes:

1. Samuel Longfellow, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891), p. 411.

2. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 2, p. 412.

3. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 2, p. 414.

4. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 2, pp. 421–422.

5. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3, p. 15.

6. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3, p. 16.

7. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3, p. 21.

8. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3, p. 25.

9. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3, pp. 40–41. For “Hawthorne,” see The Poetical Works, Riverside Edition, vol. 3 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1886), pp. 130-132: HathiTrust

10. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 2, p. 424.

11. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3, p. 18.

12. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3, pp. 26–27.

13. The Poetical Works, Riverside Edition, vol. 3 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1886); “Christmas Bells,” pp. 132–133; “Noël,” pp. 144–146: HathiTrust

14. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3, p. 50. For Johann Paul F. Richter’s text, see this translation: Google Books

15. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 2, p. 425: Archive.org

16. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3, p. 56.

Related Resources:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Christmas Bells,” The Poetical Works, Riverside Edition, vol. 3 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1886), pp. 132–133: HathiTrust

Samuel Longfellow, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891): Vol. 1 | Vol. 2 | Vol. 3

William J. Reynolds, “I heard the bells on Christmas Day,” Hymns of Our Faith (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1964), p. 81.

Robert Girard Carroon, “The Christmas carol soldier,” Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (October 1998):
http://suvcw.org/mollus/art005.htm

Robert Cottrill, “I heard the bells on Christmas Day,” WordWise Hymns (18 December 2017):
https://wordwisehymns.com/2017/12/18/i-heard-the-bells-on-christmas-day-2/

“I heard the bells on Christmas Day,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/i_heard_the_bells_on_christmas_day

J.R. Watson, “I heard the bells on Christmas Day,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology:
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/i/i-heard-the-bells-on-christmas-day