Christmas Wishes From New Mexico

 

I woke to a beautiful white Christmas this morning (as I understand many of you did). I took a walk out onto the land grant and around my land and wanted to share this Christmas experience with you. Wadsworth’s poem, Christmas Bells, kept presenting itself to me as I walked, so I thought the photos and his words might be an appropriate Christmas card to you all.

This poem very beautifully addresses the challenges life can present to each of us. The Civil War was still raging, his wife had died and his son was crippled in the war. And yet he ends his poem hopefully, believing in the greater good.

Wishing you all a very merry, peaceful, Christmas, filled with love and your own personal magic.

Peace on earth, good-will to men.

 

 

Christmas Bells

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1864)

 

 

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,

and mild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

 

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

 

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

 

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

 

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

 

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

 

 

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

 

Love to you all,

Jeane