An SATB Easter carol hymn for the people of Ukraine, as they suffer in war, April 2022. Separate SATB, verse 7 descant (optional, vocal and larger-stave keyboard versions), Lead Sheet and Lyrics only versions are included, for congregation/audience distribution and/or including lyrics in a services sheet or programme. 
 
The words were written in 1863 by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). He wrote the original, Christmas Bells, on Christmas Day after his son had been severely injured in the American Civil War. Thus, because of civil-war sensibilities, verses 4 & 5 are usually omitted when sung as the original Christmas carol, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. 
 
The universal message of peace and goodwill is unchanged, but three words have been changed to identify sympathetically with the current situation in Eastern Europe: 'Christmas' to 'Easter' and in verse 4:
 
Then from each black, accursed beast.  (mouth)
The cannon thundered in the East,         (South)
And with the sound the carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
 
Verses 4 and 5 may, of course, be omitted for any sensibilities. An optional descant has been included for verse 7.
 
Longfellow was a gentle, placid, poetic soul and a Federalist, strongly opposing the War of 1812. He was descended from English colonists who settled in New England in the early 1600s. He travelled widely across Europe, eventually settling as Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard. He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing and lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
 
1.
I heard the bells on Easter Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

2.
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.

3.
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.

4.
Then from each black, accursed beast
The cannon thundered from the East,
And with the sound the carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
5.
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.

6.
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.”

7.
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.”
 
The writer of this lovely tune, Sir (Alfred) Herbert Brewer, was a chorister at Gloucester Cathedral and studied at Exeter College, Oxford, afer which, in 1883, he received the first organ scholarship to the Royal College of Music. He later had organist positions at Bristol Cathedral and St Michael's, Coventry; he was organist and music master at Tonbridge School from 1892 to 1896, and then spent 30 years at Gloucester Cathedral, directing the Three Choirs Festival between 1898 and 1925. The tune cleverly invokes the joyful sound of ringing church bells in the last few bars that supports the poem's hope for peace and goodwill, even amid the despair and horror of war.
 
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The well-known hymn tune Waltham (1872) by John Baptiste Calkin for I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day has deliberately not been used, in order to differentiate this Easter version from the Christmas version. And, of course, from the melody used for the same words by Johnny Marks for Bing Crosby in 1956, and also recorded by Frank SInatra, Burl Ives etc.
 
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Cover photo by Ukrainian photographer and composer Arthur Lagoda @ArchiLagoda Instagram.com/wavemeart