Poem of the Day: ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’

Most of us know this famous 1872 poem by Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) as a Christmas carol. Perhaps we’ve sung it to the melody by Gustav Holst. Choral singers may be partial to its treatment by Harold Darke. As seasonal music, “In the Bleak Midwinter” is a sentimental stalwart, its final stanza, especially, seemingly calculated to move an entire Christmas-Eve congregation to weep. But as tempting as it might be to dismiss Rossetti as a sentimentalist, what she accomplishes in the beautiful language of this poem, in five hexameter aabb quatrains, is something theologically profound. First, she transposes the Bethlehem stable into the key of the English winter, with its frozen earth and icy ponds. The poem’s opening imagery, however, does more work than simply evoking a bitter Dickensian Christmas scene, from which the coziness of the stable provides a welcome respite. In the first stanza, the whole earth is caught in a season of lament. If the ground is “hard as iron,” then the dead are frozen into it, entrapped. Similarly, the water, suggestive of the waters of baptism, is frozen solid. It resembles nothing more, in fact, than a stone rolled over the entrance to a tomb. Everything sleeps the sleep of death beneath untold strata of snow. Then, into this world descends the redemptive springtime in its infancy. As God, this infant needs nothing. As a human child, his needs are simple, few, and already met. When the narrative voice shifts into both the present tense and the first person in the last stanza, it is only to highlight the utter sufficiency of this newborn, his absolute absence of need — and the thawing of the human heart, which wants to give him something anyway. In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, long ago. Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ. Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day, Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay; Enough for Him, whom angels fall before, The ox and ass and camel which adore. Angels and archangels may have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air; But His mother only, in her maiden bliss, Worshipped the beloved with a kiss. What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart. ___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’

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