Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) was an intensely public poet and an intensely private man. His own griefs, and they were considerable, barely make an appearance in all the large body of his ...

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 ...

“’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” These words come from the first two lines of immensely popular poem “A Visit from St.

You've heard of the beloved "’Twas the Night Before Christmas" poem—maybe some reinterpretations and parodies of it too. But who actually wrote it, and what inspired these iconic holiday verses? As ...

Did you know one of the most beloved Christmas poems in the world actually traces its roots back to Upstate New York? Before most of us ever called it “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”, it quietly ...

‘GOD IS NOT DEAD.’ ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, music by J.L. Hatton. The pencil annotation of the date appears to be by H.W.L. Dana, the poet’s grandson, who ...