LDS World: Healing through Jesus Christ: Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow offers timely lessons in wake of tragedy By all
accounts, Newtown, Conn., is a lovely New England town, picture-
perfect Norman Rockwell, with a flagpole and town square where
residents gathered only a few weeks ago to light the Christmas
tree and sing Christmas carols. Perhaps they even sang, “I Heard
the Bells on Christmas Day,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Longfellow spent most of his life in a beautiful New England
village — in 19th-century Cambridge, Mass. The parallels do not
stop there. Longfellow also experienced personal tragedy that
bore him down and left him bereft and shattered. The magnitude
of deaths in Newtown can do nothing less than haunt any human
being capable of feeling and perception. But when all is said
and done these killings are personal tragedies that must be
confronted on an individual level. In this respect, the
parallels between Longfellow’s wrestle with suffering and loss
perhaps reflects that of the families an