"It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"

Edmund Hamilton Sears, a Unitarian Minister wrote a poem “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” in 1849 to be used in a Christmas play. “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” is an American poem based on the Gospel of Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth where the angels announce to the shepherds that there will be ‘peace on earth, good will toward men.’ It has become a most popular Christmas carol.

A friend of Sears, W. P. Lunt --a Quincy, MA, minister, requested that he write “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear” to be sung in a Sunday School Christmas play. The Christmas carol is now very popular among many denominations and is used extensively in Christmas pageants in America.

“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”

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 over its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.

Yet 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;
O 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.
O 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 send back the song
Which now the angels sing.

Apparently, the text was used with several different melodies before it was officially set to specific music in today’s Christmas carol form. Composer, Richard S. Willis adapted the words of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” to his musical work “Carol.”

“ It Came Upon A Midnight Clear”

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