25 December 2022 at 03:00
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. Our first Christmas Day carol is my own personal favorite. I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day is unusual in that there is no reference to the Christ child,manger, Holy Family, shepherds, Magi, or even the Herald Angels. Instead, it focuses on the message of those angels amid the ghastly carnage of war. It was written not by famed Unitarian hymnist Samuel Longfellow,but by his brother Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, then America’s most honored and adored poet who had created national epics like The Courtship of Miles Standish , The Song of Hiawatha , and Evangeline as well as the school recital...