On Christmas Day 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sat in his chair at his writing table and began a poem. “I heard the bells on Christmas Day / Their old, familiar carols play, / and wild and sweet / ...

‘Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: / ‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep,’” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow proclaims in the tremendous final verse of his 1865 Civil War poem “Christmas Bells.” We ...

One of the best known American poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, of the Class of 1825, contributed to the wealth of carols sung each holiday season when he wrote “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” ...

Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was no stranger to sorrow. Longfellow’s wife died in a fire and his son was severely injured when fighting for the Union in the Civil War. Amid personal tragedy and ...

The carol that we now know as “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” was originally a poem called “Christmas Bells” written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow during the Civil War. It is a song of hope that ...

(Parts of this column were first published as an editorial in the York Daily Record/Sunday News at Christmas in 2014) American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote to a friend in 1863: “I have been ...

Fifty-seven-year-old poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote to a friend in 1863: "I have been through a great deal of trouble and anxiety." At this moment in which the widower with six children was ...

Editor’s Note: This article previously appeared in a different format as part of The Atlantic’s Notes section, retired in 2021. A reader recommends one for the day: I’m really enjoying the Christmas ...