Christmas Carols (It Came upon the Midnight Clear)
Christmas Carols (It Came upon the Midnight Clear)
Original Text
Edmund H. Sears, Sermons and Songs of the Christian Life (Boston: Noyes, Holmes, 1875): 17-18. Yale Divinity Library. Cf. American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, selected and annotated by John Hollander (New York: Library of America, 1993): I, 588-89. PS 607 A56 1993 Robarts Library.
2 That glorious song of old,
3From angels bending near the earth
4 To touch their harps of gold;
5"Peace on the earth, good will to men
6 From heaven's all-gracious King" --
7The world in solemn stillness lay
8 To hear the angels sing.
9Still through the cloven skies they come
10 With peaceful wings unfurled,
11And still their heavenly music floats
12 O'er all the weary world;
13Above its sad and lowly plains
14 They bend on hovering wing,
16 The blessed angels sing.
17But with the woes of sin and strife
18 The world has suffered long;
19Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
20 Two thousand years of wrong;
21And man, at war with man, hears not
22 The love-song which they bring; --
23Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife,
24 And hear the angels sing!
25And ye, beneath life's crushing load,
26 Whose forms are bending low,
27Who toil along the climbing way
28 With painful steps and slow,
29Look now! for glad and golden hours
30 Come swiftly on the wing; --
31Oh, rest beside the weary road
32 And hear the angels sing!
33For lo! the days are hastening on
34 By prophet bards foretold,
35When with the ever circling years
36 Comes round the age of gold;
37When Peace shall over all the earth
38 Its ancient splendors fling,
39And the whole world give back the song
40 Which now the angels sing.
Notes
1] This hymn follows and complements the first of many sermons in the book, preached on "The Cloud of Witnesses" All-Saints day, by making "the heart lyrical with the truth it [the sermon] sets forth" (v). The Biblical text on which the sermon is based, from Hebrews 12:1, concerns the doctrine of angels: "Seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." Sears explains this doctrine as follows:
... the spirit-world and this are continuous and interblending and from that run down into this the influence and energy on which we draw mightily in our struggles and conquests; ... no man is alone or isolated; ... there are chords of sympathy that run from us along the higher ranks of being; ... the repentance of a single sinner is an event that sends a wavelet of joy into the breasts of those who have been an invisible guard around his virtue and helped determine his decision for the right. (4)Back to Line
....
Your home may be humble, apart, alone; but if a good life is lived there, it stands in the centre of an amphitheatre thronged with heavenly multitudes, all bending towards you and breathing their spirit into yours. (14-15)
15] Babel-sounds: Sears compares the sounds of the world to the confused languages given to the builders of the Tower of Babel by God in Genesis as a punishment for their pride in trying to reach heaven. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1852
Publication Notes
Five Christmas Hymns (1852)
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Rhyme