Poem of the Day: ‘Music on Christmas Morning’

Today’s Poem of the Day, “Music on Christmas Morning,” appeared originally in 1846, in a volume of poetry by three authors, purportedly brothers: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The book was a stunning non-success, selling only two copies in the year of its publication. Like so many poets of the mid-nineteenth century — see, for example, Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, whose “Sonnet XVI” was Poem of the Day on December 14 — the Brothers Bell might have languished unknown in their lifetimes and beyond. Only one stroke of fortune saved them from literary obscurity.That stroke of fortune? It was simply that the Brothers Bell did not exist, except as pen names for Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë. Remarkably undeterred by their failure in the poetry market, all three sisters responded by beginning the novels which established them, eventually, under their own names, in the English literary canon. Anne, the youngest sister, saw her first novel, “Agnes Grey,” detailing her harrowing experiences as a governess, appear in the aftermath of her sister Charlotte’s success with “Jane Eyre,” to be criticized as a pallid imitation. She lived to write one more novel, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” before succumbing, at age twenty-nine, to the tuberculosis which had already ravaged her family. For the rest of their short lives, the sisters continued to write and publish poems as well as novels. Emily’s “To a Wreath of Snow,” for example, appeared as Poem of the Day on Monday.As Acton Bell the poet, Anne Brontë wrote pleasingly enough, if not with the righteous fury that animates her novels. The Brothers Bell, after all, belonged to an era when anyone who was literate at all could produce a competent poem in rhyme and meter. Most of the poems in the 1846 collection feel like poems that anyone could have written under a pseudonym, simply for something to do — a person perhaps more sincere and less funny than Jane Austen, whose “Oh! Mr. Best, You’re Very Bad,” appeared as Poem of the Day in October. The offerings of this fictional Acton Bell, which comprise the third section of the ill-fated volume, deal variously with bowers, vanity, penitence, faith, doubt, mortality, and William Cowper, among other subjects. “Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day,” with its intimation of tumultuous passions, strikes perhaps most closely at its author’s true nature. Yet “Music on Christmas Morning” also rises above the level of the expected. The voice of its tetrameter ababcc sestets feels authentic and fresh, as though its speaker were not merely rehearsing conventional sentiments. “Music I love,” this speaker frankly declares at the poem’s opening — but no music so much as the music of Christmas morning, spelling out with joy the hope of salvation.Music on Christmas Morningby Anne BrontëMusic I love — but never strainCould kindle raptures so divine,So grief assuage, so conquer pain,And rouse this pensive heart of mine —As that we hear on Christmas morn,Upon the wintry breezes borne.Though Darkness still her empire keep,And hours must pass, ere morning break;From troubled dreams, or slumbers deep,That music kindly bids us wake:It calls us, with an angel’s voice,To wake, and worship, and rejoice;To greet with joy the glorious morn,Which angels welcomed long ago,When our redeeming Lord was born,To bring the light of Heaven below;The Powers of Darkness to dispel,And rescue Earth from Death and Hell.While listening to that sacred strain,My raptured spirit soars on high;I seem to hear those songs againResounding through the open sky,That kindled such divine delight,In those who watched their flocks by night.With them, I celebrate His birth —Glory to God, in highest Heaven,Good-will to men, and peace on Earth,To us a Saviour-king is given;Our God is come to claim His own,And Satan’s power is overthrown!A sinless God, for sinful men,Descends to suffer and to bleed;Hell must renounce its empire then;The price is paid, the world is freed,And Satan’s self must now confess,That Christ has earned a Right to bless:Now holy Peace may smile from heaven,And heavenly Truth from earth shall spring:The captive’s galling bonds are riven,For our Redeemer is our king;And He that gave his blood for menWill lead us home to God again.___________________________________________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 are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always 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: ‘Music on Christmas Morning’

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