C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810–1876)
Peace on Earth
I
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.
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 blessèd angels sing.
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!
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!
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.