Lyrics IT CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR The words for this American carol are based on a poem written in 1849 by Dr. Edmund Sears, a Unitarian minister. The following year Richard Storrs Willis, an editor and critic of a New York newspaper as well as a composer, wrote the melody to which the words were adapted. (Richard Willis studied music in Europe under Felix Mendelssohn.) The line O rest beside the weary road/And hear the angels sing has long been a favorite of mine and, I feel, expresses a need many of us have during the crush of the busy holiday season. It came upon a 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. 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! Still thru the cloven skies they come With peaceful wings unfurled; And still their heav'nly music floats O'er all the weary world. Above its sad and lonely plains They bend on hovering wing And ever o'er its Babel sounds The blessed angels sing. All 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 hast'ning 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 splendours fling, And the whole world give back the song Which now the angels sing!