By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
DEC. 23, 2022 | At this time of year, words of Christmas carols reverberate in my mind, giving me pleasure. This carol, “It came upon the midnight clear,” has particularly been on my mind this year.
The carol comes from 1849, when Edward Sears, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Mass., wrote the words in a poem. It is said that the poem was first heard by parishioners gathered in Sears’ home on Christmas Eve.
A year later, Sears asked Richard Storrs Willis, who had trained under Composer Felix Mendelssohn, to write music for it. Sears wrote the poem at the request of another pastor friend, Williams Parsons Lunt, for Lunt’s Sunday school at the United First Parish Church in Quincy, Mass.
Sears had graduated from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. in 1832, and later enrolled in the Theological School, in Cambridge, Mass., graduating in 1837. He married in 1839, and settled down to country life as a pastor in Wayland. He accepted a call at a church in Weston, Mass.in 1866. From 1859 to 1871, he served as the editor of The Monthly Religious Magazine. He died on January 16, 1876, from his injuries two years earlier on felling a tree.
The words Sears penned came during a period of personal melancholy, and with news of revolution in Europe, Sears portrayed the world as dark, full of “sin and strife.” Some experts feel that Sears poem was written ”…. not hearing the Christmas message.”
Yet even a cursory reading of the poem immediately has passages that reminds us of the days of Christ’s birth. Plus, add in the message of peace on earth. We liked this part of the carol: “The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing,” this at the time of the birth of Jesus. Oh, how still and peaceful it must have been!
The full song comprises five stanzas. Several variations also exist to Sears’ original lyrics.
It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace on the earth, good will to men
From heaven’s all-gracious King” –
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.
Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o’er its Babel-sounds
The blessed angels sing.
But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring; –
Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing!
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing; –
Oh, rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing!
For lo! the days are hastening on
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When Peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.
We hope you and your family have a fulfilled and joyous Christmas.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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