In the Bleak Midwinter, in a Nutshell

Christina Rossetti, one of the clan of Pre-Raphaelites, wrote a religious poem that has since been set to music by Gustav Holst and others, and turned into a Christmas hymn.

I've not entirely been a fan of her writing style, which in the first verse of this poem has a kind of literally lapidary Cubist quality even if she was writing decades earlier, in the 19th century. But it is undoubtedly also moving.

From Pre-Raphaelitism and the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood (1905)
Likely by William Holman Hunt, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Night
by Edward Burne-Jones
via Wikimedia Commons

Our God, Heav’n cannot hold him
Nor earth sustain;
Heav’n 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.

[...]

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.

***

To me, an element of William Blake's mysticism tinges the second verse: having an idea of religion in which there is always a conflict or a wrangling for a central role, the Tyger and the Lamb. Maybe inspired by Paradise Lost?

I see this portrait of conflict as projecting a personal struggle with faith, or with the world. Seen as an 'objective' reader of the poem: why, in a Christian cosmology, can't a loving God coexist with heaven and earth?

It's also unclear why Jesus would expect gifts; but that might be just my opinion, influenced by my Black Friday season anti-consumerism.

*

'Pre-Raphaelite window
in Highfield United Reform Church, Rock Ferry'
In the Pre-Raphaelite style.
via Wikimedia Commons

The King's College Choir at Cambridge recorded a rather fine version of Holst's musical setting in 2005, and it is available on YouTube.

In the Bleak Midwinter (1872) [Wikipedia]

The Lady of Shalott

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

There was an earlier version of this poem, from 1833; this one is the one I've seen in anthologies and school textbooks. It tells the story of Elaine, who in Arthurian legend was in love with Sir Lancelot; since this affection was not requited she died and went floating in a barge down the river to Camelot, where the court of Arthur discovered her. The tale is screwed up — it's fairly sick to parade one's corpse in front of a love interest, and the likelihood that the barge would arrow neatly to its destination is physically doubtful as Anne of Green Gables would discover — but I like the setting and atmosphere very much and particularly Tennyson's power of singling out words that give strong and concise pictures of their real or imaginary originals.

Tennyson interprets the tale gently to symbolize the vagueness of an inward-looking or confined life, where one looks at life through the lens of art, books, or some other medium; and is better fitted by nature or nurture to go on daydreaming than to struggle with life or to bear a contact with harsh realities when and if it comes. Whether he meant it to refer to poets like himself, or other artists, or whether he was applying it to broader social isolation, is unclear to me.

*

Picture: This in my view garish (but it was in my English Literature textbook, so the associations are there) painting by William Holman Hunt is "The Lady of Shalott," in the medium of oil on canvas, painted in 1905. It is housed in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut. Via Wikimedia Commons.

*