In the bleak midwinter
05/02/14 04:41
Christina Rossetti might have had reason to be depressed. Her father, Gabriele Rossetti was a political exile.His poems were supposed to be patriotic and display his love for his native Sicily. His patron was Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, but in 1821 the Italian king revoked the constitution and those who supported that constitution were forced into exile. He fled to England where he met, wooed and wedded the sister of Lord Byron’s physician, John William Polidori. His sister Frances, now wife of Rossetti, was mother of two boys and two girls. Christian was the youngest, and so she was eyewitness to the decline of her father and the deterioration of the family’s means. Her father contracted persistent bronchitis, possibly tuberculosis and his eye site became too weak for him to continue as a writer and a teacher. His physical ailments were followed by severe financial difficulties for the family and bouts of depression.
As she reached adulthood, there were three suitors. She was engaged to the painter James Collinson, but the engagement was broken off when he reverted to Catholicism. Charles Cayley proposed, but she declined. The painter John Brett also proposed marriage, but she turned him down as well. She remained single.
Her life hadn’t been all that wonderful, all things considered. She did have the benefit of an education. As far as we know her childhood was mostly happy. Her mother was her primary teacher and had her study the classics, religion, fairy tales and novels. They lived near Madam Tussauds, the London Zoo and Regent’s Park.
But her poetry has a definite dark side. She is probably most famous for the long poem, “Goblin Market,” in which a pair of sisters learn the hard way about the dangers of eating the goblin’s fruits. The poem is set at the beginning of winter and the sister who does eat the fruit suffers from disease and depression. This is a poem that I would not recommend reading to your children.
Her most famous poem, however, is the one that has been in my mind the past few days as the temperatures hover on the negative side of zero, the snow falls, and the skies are a persistent gray.
You probably know the poem as a Christmas Carol. It was set to music by Gustav Holst. But there is another musical setting, by Harold Edwin Darke which is more famous. The Darke setting is frequently one of the carols for the service of nine lessons and carols held each year at King’s College Choir. Darke was conductor of that choir during World War II. In those days, it made sense to have a carol with these words:
In the bleak mid-winter
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 mid-winter
Long ago.
You have to get to the second stanza of the poem to tell that it is a Christmas carol:
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.
Most hymnals include only four of the stanzas of the poem, omitting the middle one:
Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk,
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.
The fourth stanza paints a simple and beautiful picture of the mother Mary:
Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air -
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.
The final stanza is an invitation, appropriate for the season of Epiphany:
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.
I don’t want to be critical of the hymn settings of the poem, but what works as a Christmas carol, works even better, in my opinion as a dark and brooding poem. The occasion of Christmas seems to call for celebration and loud hymns of praise. The poem, however, reminds us that the season of Christ’s birth is also a season ini which there is plenty of darkness,, grief, regret, and sorrow. Life isn’t just good times and good feelings. There is more. And the poet can speak to the deeper levels of life’s realities in ways that we prose writers fail to imitate.
So it seems as if we might be in a bleak midwinter. The snow is not clean alongside the roadways. It is dirty and gray and dingy and the cold weather is getting a bit old. The gray skies make us long for our usual sunshine and the fog is at berst a challenge.
Indeed we find ourselves in the bleak midwinter. We know the bite of the frosty winds, the iron hardness of the ice and the build up of snow on snow. She repeat it to make sure that we understand that there is plenty: snow on snow.
Christina Rossetti suffered from Graves Disease and later from breast cancer. Though the tumor was removed, the cancer recurred. She died on December 29, 1894, in the bleak midwinter. She wrote a poem for the occasion:
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant you no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree;
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
She is not forgotten. The place where she died, in Torrington Square, is marked with a stone tablet and there is also a marker in Highgate Cemetery. J.K. Rowling named her latest novel with a line from Rossetti’s poem, “A Dirge:” The Cuckoo’s Calling.”
If you want a more traditional Christmas Carol, Rossetti also wrote “Love Came down at Christmas.” The final stanza of that poem is a more fitting memorial than “In the Bleak Midwinter:”
Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.
The bleak midwinter is only one of the seasons of our life. It too will pass. Love, however is forever.