1859 and the Lonely Mockingbird

1856-60 Blogging, Part 5 of 5
"Death, death, death, death, death."

Engraving of Walt Whitman from the
first edition (1855) of Leaves of Grass.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

In these long breaks between the signature 21 Essays series, I’m experimenting with a new feature focused on possibilities for future series.  I’ll spin the roulette wheel to pick a year (or set of years) and then brainstorm on some potential essay topics.  This time the wheel spins, gradually slows, then clicks to a stop, pointing at:  1856-1860. 

So here’s my fifth and final series possibility, this one from 1859 again (that’s four out of five from 1859, but that’s okay…):  21 essays on the poem “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” by Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) published the first edition of his major poetry collection Leaves of Grass in 1855, with a second edition issued in 1856 and a third in 1860.  With each edition, Leaves of Grass grew larger.  The 1860 edition was the first to include “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” where it was initially known as “A Word Out of the Sea.”  Whitman had written the poem in 1859 and first published it in the Saturday Press under the title “A Child’s Reminiscence.”

“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” IS a child’s reminiscence, entirely built upon Whitman’s boyhood memory of two mockingbirds that he observed one summer nesting on a Long Island beach.  One of the birds does not return, leaving the other to express his loss in song.  The Indian word “Paumanok” is Whitman’s term for Long Island. The “cradle” that endlessly rock is the ocean.  The word out of the sea is “death.”

Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over,

Death, death, death, death, death.

I grew up on Long Island.  Much has changed, but not the ocean.  It’s still a cradle endlessly rocking.  And death is still an inescapable part of our world.

The aria sinking,

All else continuing, the stars shining,

The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuously echoing,

On the sands of Paumanok’s shore gray and rustling…

This is the last of my official 1856-60 ideas (with no promises that I’ll necessarily be getting to any of them…).

Next year up on the random year(s) generator:  2006.  (Coming soon…)

© 2012 Lee Price

1856 and the Lackawanna Valley

1856-60 Blogging, Part 4 of 5
Working for the Railroad

In these long breaks between the signature 21 Essays series, I’m experimenting with a new feature focused on possibilities for future series.  I’ll spin the roulette wheel to pick a year (or set of years) and then brainstorm on some potential essay topics.  This time the wheel spins, gradually slows, then clicks to a stop, pointing at:  1856-1860. 

So here’s an 1856 series possibility:  21 essays on “The Lackawanna Valley,” a painting by George Inness.

"The Lackawanna Valley" by George Inness
from the collection at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC).

This was supposed to be a simple advertising piece.  The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad hired George Inness (1825-1894), an ambitious but still unestablished young artist, to promote their company and the railroad industry through his painting skills.  People were awed by the power of the awesome new trains but they were scared by them, too.  The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad wanted to reassure people that trains could easily fit into their small town landscapes.  They decided to use art to sell the idea that trains are unthreatening.

Did Inness believe this?  It’s the tensions within the painting that make it especially fascinating.  The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad probably wanted a large-scale Hudson River School-style landscape—but with a train meandering through it, placidly moving through a bucolic scene. Inness gave them an attractive landscape and a handsome train, but then he foregrounded it with a barren field of tree stumps.  He seems to suggest that the natural landscape will inevitably fall before the encroaching modern technology.  It’s a subtle message that Inness may have hoped to slip by the corporate people.

A series on “The Lackawanna Valley” could go many places:  to the emerging railroad industry in the mid-19th century, to the schools of painting like the Barbizon School and the Hudson River School that influenced Inness, and to Inness’ slow move toward a more spiritual approach to painting that culminated in the great Tonalist paintings of his later years.  I think it would be fun to go deeper into the work of George Inness and explore more fully the world that he painted.

Tomorrow, I’ll be proposing the last of these 1856-60 ideas (with no promises that I’ll necessarily be getting to any of them…).  But I’m wide open to other suggestions.  Any ideas for 1856-60 books, short stories, poems, paintings, songs, or other cultural artifacts that might inspire a good 21 Essays series?

© 2012 Lee Price

1859 and Goblin Merchants

1856-60 Blogging, Part 3 of 5
Christina Rossetti's Goblins

In these long breaks between the signature 21 Essays series, I’m experimenting with a new feature focused on possibilities for future series.  I’ll spin the roulette wheel to pick a year (or set of years) and then brainstorm on some potential essay topics.  This time the wheel spins, gradually slows, then clicks to a stop, pointing at:  1856-1860. 

So here’s an 1859 series possibility:  21 essays on “Goblin Market,” a poem by Christina Rossetti.

Backwards up the mossy glen

Turn’d and troop’d the goblin men,

With their shrill repeated cry,

“Come buy, come buy.”

Christina Rossetti’s intense narrative poem “Goblin Market” is a recent discovery for me.  I read it in preparation for my series on Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter.”  Much as I loved “Goblin Market,” it didn’t provide much grist for the “Midwinter” series which leaned more toward pleasant Nativity thoughts than images of evil goblin merchants and their seductive and juicy fruits.

If “In the Bleak Midwinter” was appropriate for Christmas, “Goblin Market” might be a good choice for Halloween.  In a cultural scene overcrowded with zombies and vampires, it might be nice to acknowledge the too-often-overlooked goblins.

One had a cat’s face,

One whisk’d a tail,

One tramp’d at a rat’s pace,

One crawl’d like a snail,

One like a wombat prowl’d obtuse and furry,

One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.

Over the next two days, I’ll be proposing some more 1856-60 ideas (with no promises that I’ll necessarily be getting to any of them…).  But I’m wide open to other suggestions.  Any ideas for 1856-60 books, short stories, poems, paintings, songs, or other cultural artifacts that might inspire a good 21 Essays series?

© 2012 Lee Price

1859 and Dave the Potter

1856-60 Blogging, Part 2 of 5
Dave the Potter’s Storage Jar

In these long breaks between the signature 21 Essays series, I’m experimenting with a new feature focused on possibilities for future series.  I’ll spin the roulette wheel to pick a year (or set of years) and then brainstorm on some potential essay topics.  This time the wheel spins, gradually slows, then clicks to a stop, pointing at:  1856-1860. 

So here’s an 1859 series possibility:  21 essays on Dave the Potter and his magnificent storage jar at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Storage Jar made by David Drake (Dave the Potter),
American, 1800 - c. 1870.  Made in Edgefield,
 South Carolina in 1859.  Alkaline-glazed stoneware,
26 1/2 x 15 1/2 (67.3 x 39.4 cm.).
Philadelphia Museum of Art

This pot is incredible.  It stands over two feet high and  it’s 15 inches wide.  To make a pot this big, you would have to be capable of manipulating a huge quantity of clay on the wheel.  To get it this perfect, you’d have to be a master craftsman.

Dave the Potter was a slave who worked for stoneware potters in the Old Edgefield District of South Carolina.  He was probably in his late 50s when he made this pot.  Unlike most slaves, he was literate and was known for writing distinctive verses on his pots.  This particular storage jar is inscribed:  “Good for lard or holding fresh meat,/blest we were when peter saw the folded sheet.”  Also, the pot has the initials LM which would stand for Lewis Miles, owner of the pottery, and it’s signed by the artist:  “May 3d 1859/Dave.”

At one time almost lost to the mists of history, Dave the Potter is now recognized as a master craftsman of the 19th century and his works deserve to be celebrated.

Over the next three days, I’ll be proposing some more 1856-60 ideas (with no promises that I’ll necessarily be getting to any of them…).  But I’m wide open to other suggestions.  Any ideas for 1856-60 books, short stories, poems, songs, or other cultural artifacts that might inspire a good 21 Essays series?

© 2012 Lee Price

1859 and a Jug of Wine

1856-60 Blogging, Part 1 of 5
Bread, Wine, and Verse

Edmund J. Sullivan's illustration to Quatrain 11
of the first edition of FitzGerald's Rubaiyat.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

In these long breaks between the signature 21 Essays series, I’m experimenting with a new feature focused on possibilities for future series.  I’ll spin the roulette wheel to pick a year (or set of years) and then brainstorm on some potential essay topics.  This time the wheel spins, gradually slows, then clicks to a stop, pointing at:  1856-1860. 

So here’s an 1859 series possibility:  15 essays on The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, the 1859 first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s translation.  (15 essays would come to one essay for every five quatrains.)

I first read Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyát when in college—in retrospect, a pretty ideal time to enjoy a dream of fatalistic hedonism.

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse  – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

That’s the first edition version of Quatrain 11.  The fifth (and posthumous) edition of 1889 yielded the classic quote:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

I’m not much on picnics, but this one continues to sound appealing.  A venture into the Rubáiyát could lead in many directions—to the Persian original, to FitzGerald’s free-wheeling translation style (often more FitzGerald than Khayyam), to the philosophies of Ecclesiastes and Epicurus that seem to echo through it.  It might make a nice series for lazy summer evenings—essays to be enjoyed with a glass of wine at sunset.

A Pre-Raphaelite illuminated manuscript
tribute to FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of
Omar Khayyam with calligraphy and
ornamentation by William Morris and an
illustration by Edward Burne-Jones.

Over the next four days, I’ll be proposing some more 1856-60 ideas (with no promises that I’ll necessarily be getting to any of them…).  But I’m wide open to other suggestions.  Any ideas for 1856-60 books, short stories, poems, songs, or other cultural artifacts that might inspire a good 21 Essays series?

© 2012 Lee Price

A Deeply Moving Song

Midwinter-blogging, essay 12 of 12 blog entries on

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti

The King's College Choir sings "In the Bleak Midwinter" in
King's College Chapel, Cambridge, England.

A Deeply Moving Song

I think it would be a mistake to entirely neglect a mention of the musical settings in this midwinter blogging series.  When I first began research on “In the Bleak Midwinter,” I knew and loved the song through its Gustav Holst setting.  Therefore, I was delighted to discover that “In the Bleak Midwinter” had been named “Best Carol of All Time” by a 2008 BBC music magazine poll of choirmasters and other choral experts.  However, looking into the matter a bit further, I found that it was a Harold Darke setting—and not the Holst I knew and loved—that achieved this acclaim.  Up to that point, I hadn’t even heard the Darke music.

The results of the BBC poll still strike me as odd but I’m willing to accept this is what you get when you poll people in the choral business rather than the general public.  The songs they chose are lovely, even if rather unfamiliar:

1. In the Bleak Midwinter

2. In Dulci Jubilo

3. A Spotless Rose

4. Bethlehem Down

5. Lully, Lulla

6. Tomorrow Shall be My Dancing Day

7. There is No Rose

8. O Come All Ye Faithful

9. Of the Father's Heart Begotten

10. What Sweeter Music

I like the appreciation that Jeremy Pound, deputy editor of BBC Music Magazine, issued in defense of their #1 pick on the Christmas hit parade:  “While some of the carols nominated may seem unfamiliar, does any other song get to the very heart of Christmas as understatedly but effectively as ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’?”  Furthermore, Pound said that “In the Bleak Midwinter” was “nigh-on perfect as a carol text…  There’s the winter cold, the coming of Christ, the description of the nativity scene and, finally, that ‘What shall I give him?’ moment of self-reflection. And then there’s the music.”

The Holst setting was composed at the request of his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams for the 1906 Anglican Hymnal.  It was written as a simple hymn, not a choral arrangement, and the melody received the name “Cranham” for the town Cranham, Gloucestershire where it was written.

The original Harold Darke setting was conceived as a choral arrangement with organ accompaniment and tenor and soprano solos.  Darke composed it in 1909, a few years after Holst contributed his version to the hymnal.  Thanks to seasonal broadcasts of the King’s College Choir singing “In the Bleak Midwinter,” this arrangement has become very well known in England.  In the United States, it remains much less familiar.

Kate McGarrigle performing
"In the Bleak Midwinter."

I think both versions are great and it’s been a real pleasure compiling great performances of both arrangements on the Music Room sections of this blog.

Today’s closing selection is particularly moving.  Brother and sister Rufus and Martha Wainwright sing the Darke setting of “In the Bleak Midwinter,” accompanied by their mother Kate McGarrigle in her last public performance at the Royal Albert Hall.  She died six weeks later of sarcoma.  It’s beautiful to see this very talented family performing together, expressing their love for each other 

through the words and music of “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Kate McGarrigle.

The Music Room

Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Kate McGarrigle sing “In the Bleak Midwinter”…

Reference Sources

Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti

Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska

Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh

The Achievement of Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent

Christina Rossetti (Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom

Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe

Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico

Genius by Harold Bloom

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

The Pre-Raphaelites by Andrea Rose

Victorian Painting by Christopher Wood

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2012 Lee Price

Rossetti's Other Christmas Poems

Midwinter-blogging, essay 11 of 12 blog entries on

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti

Rossetti’s Other Christmas Poems

Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their
famous Christmas tree.

Our modern Christmas was being born while Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was growing up.  She was ten when Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol and 18 when a woodcut of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s Christmas tree went the Victorian version of viral—swiftly popularizing the Christmas tree throughout England and the States.  These two events were key in shaping the Christmas that we know and celebrate today.  The idea of Christmas as a family-centered holiday, complete with opportunities for organized gift-giving, began to take firm hold upon the public imagination.

The Rossetti family appears to have always enjoyed Christmas, mainly welcoming the occasion as a time for a quiet family reunion.  Rossetti’s Christmas poetry displays a genuine fondness for the holiday, even apart from its religious importance.  Around the same time she wrote “In the Bleak Midwinter,” she also wrote this charming little untitled verse:

Common Holly hears a berry

To make Christmas Robins merry: —

Golden Holly bears a rose,

Unfolding at October’s close

To cheer an old Friend’s eyes and nose.

Admittedly, Rossetti’s voluminous writings cover many Biblical topics, with the Christmas poetry only accounting for a relatively small percentage of the total.  In all, there are approximately 30 poems which feature strong Advent or Christmas themes.  Most are forgotten today, but two of them broke from the pack to become seasonal favorites.  Obviously one of these is our primary subject, “In the Bleak Midwinter.”  The other is “Love Came Down At Christmas,” first published without a title in Rossetti’s book Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1885) and later anthologized with the title “Christmastide” in 1893.

“Christmastide”

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

Sometime in the two decades following Rossetti’s death, someone set “Christmastide” to the Irish melody called “Gartan” and it made it into an alternative edition of the Episcopal Church’s hymnal, edited by the Rev. Dr. Charles Hutchins, in 1920.  While never achieving the wide popularity of its cousin “In the Bleak Midwinter,” it’s retained a secure place in hymnals for nearly a century.

Here’s one final favorite of mine, which showcases Rossetti’s enthusiasm for paradoxes.  “In the Bleak Midwinter” plays with the traditional Christian paradox of an infinite God present in a tiny baby.  Rossetti’s “Christmas Eve” finds a whole new set of paradoxes in the holiday:

“Christmas Eve”

CHRISTMAS hath darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

“Saint Columba Altarpiece,” central panel, circa 1455,

by Rogier van der Weyden, from the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Music Room

Tine Thing Helseth plays an instrumental version of “In the Bleak Midwinter”…

... and Jars of Clay perform  “Love Came Down at Christmas.”

Reference Sources

Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti

Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska

Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh

The Achievement of Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent

Christina Rossetti (Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom

Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe

Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico

Genius by Harold Bloom

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

The Pre-Raphaelites by Andrea Rose

Victorian Painting by Christopher Wood

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2011 Lee Price

Off to America

Midwinter-blogging, essay 10 of 12 blog entries on

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti

Off to America

Christina Rossetti portrait by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

The American literary journal Scribner’s Monthly requested a Christmas poem from Christina Rossetti in 1872.  She sent them “In the Bleak Midwinter.”  As she tended to offer already-written poems when fielding requests like this, it’s difficult to determine when the poem was written.

The publication of the poem was a decidedly minor event in Rossetti’s life.  It didn’t pay much and didn’t receive much notice after it was released into the world.  Rossetti was recovering from a serious illness at the time, rarely venturing from the house or even from 

Scribner's Monthly, Dec. 1872.

her bed.  Most likely, she didn’t give much further thought to the poem after sending it off to America.

At this point in her life, Christina Rossetti had established a reputation for herself as one of England’s leading poetesses.  The very popular Elizabeth Barrett Browning had recently died and Rossetti was widely considered to be her successor.  But positive critical appreciation did not go hand in hand with financial success or commercial popularity.  She had to be content with intellectual admiration in the absence of a breakthrough work like Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, a model for a woman poet’s potential for popular success in the Victorian era.

From both a commercial and critical standpoint, Rossetti’s most popular poem was “Goblin Market,” published ten years earlier in 1862.  “Goblin Market” tells a dark fairy tale of two sisters, one of whom makes a deal with local goblin merchants and nearly dies from the experience.  Rossetti was a very Christian writer, frequently drawing from her deeply held Anglican beliefs.  But while “Goblin Market” can be read as a sort of Christian moral story, its primary fascination has always resided in its uncanny and sexualized imagery.

Title page of Goblin Market and
Other Poems, designed and
illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

“Goblin Market” is an altogether different type of poem from “In the Bleak Midwinter.”  As Rossetti’s reputation has ebbed and flowed over the past 150 years, these two poems have come to represent Rossetti in the mass culture.  “Goblin Market” has remained the critical favorite, inspiring reams of academic interpretation.  By contrast, “In the Bleak Midwinter” has received scant critical attention, but it can boast the only Rossetti lyrics that are instantly recognized far and wide.

Curiously, Rossetti never lived to see the outbreak of popularity for her little poem.  It only began to receive attention after it was published in a 1904 “Collected Works” edition a decade after her death.

Rossetti knew her work was good and expected it to last.  But if she returned today to google her poetry to see which poems people were still talking about, she probably would expect to see “Goblin Market,” “The Convent Threshold,” “Birthday,” “Remember,” and other serious poems.   I imagine she’d be surprised to see a blog dedicating 12 entries to that little poem called “In the Bleak Midwinter” 149 years after she sent it off to a far-away publisher.

The Music Room

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa sings “In the Bleak Midwinter”…

Reference Sources

Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti

Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska

Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh

The Achievement of Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent

Christina Rossetti (Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom

Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe

Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico

Genius by Harold Bloom

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

The Pre-Raphaelites by Andrea Rose

Victorian Painting by Christopher Wood

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2011 Lee Price

Christina Rossetti's Eyes

Midwinter-blogging, essay 9 of 12 blog entries on

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti posed as Mary:  “The Girlhood of
Mary Virgin,” 1849, oil on canvas by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  From the collection
of the Tate Britain, London, England.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Christina Rossetti's Eyes

Using minimalist strokes in her poem “In the Bleak Midwinter,” Christina Rossetti paints a picture of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Mary is a maiden, she is transported by bliss, she feeds her baby, and she worships with a kiss.

Christina Rossetti as Mary again:

“Ecce Ancilla Domini!,” 1850,

oil on canvas by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

From the collection of the

Tate Britain, London, England.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Christina Rossetti’s brother, the great Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had earlier depicted Mary as a character in two of his first paintings, Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini!.  His model for Mary was his sister Christina, aged 18 when posing for Girlhood of Mary Virgin and 20 for Ecce Ancilla Domini.  The first painting received some acclaim when first exhibited;  the second was harshly criticized in very public forums.  During Christina’s life, both paintings were well known and the subject of growing praise.  They remain classics of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

How does it feel to be the face of Mary?  Especially for a person as devout as Christina Rossetti?

“When a young girl, at the time that she sat for the virgin in the picture now in the National Gallery, she (Christina Rossetti) was, as both her mother and Gabriel
have told me, really lovely, with an
extraordinary expression of pensive sweetness.”

          Mr. Watts-Dunton

          The Athenaeum

          January 5, 1895

Even though a beauty of personality comes through in many of the poems, it’s hard to find that pensive sweetness in later drawings and photographs of Rossetti.  You can see that it’s the same person who posed for the paintings but there’s a hardness to her that can intimidate even now.  The mystical beauty captured in the paintings is absent.

Now let me add one more painting to the mix now…

“The Light of the World,” 1851,

by William Holman Hunt.

From the Manchester Art Gallery.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

We sing Rossetti’s lyrics to “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “Love Came Down at Christmas” at our church, but there’s another very notable link to Rossetti.  In one of the church hallways, there’s a print on the wall of one of the world’s most famous paintings, William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World.  It has been reproduced millions of times—our church is one of thousands that displays it.  In the picture, Jesus stands outside the door and knocks.

Christina Rossetti was one of Hunt’s models for the face of Jesus.  In an 1898 letter to Edward Clodd, Hunt remembered: 

“As I had to have some living being for the colour of the flesh with growth of eyebrows and eyelashes, the solemn expression, when the face was quiescent, of Miss Rossetti promised to help me with some shade of earnestness I aimed at getting…” *

Other models also contributed to Hunt’s vision, but it’s generally believed that his painting of Christ’s eyes was largely inspired by Rossetti.  They may be her eyes.

Detail of "The Light
of the World."

Mary, Jesus, Christina—virgins all.  At the time she was posing, Christina would not have anticipated that she herself would remain a maiden all her life.  She did know she was going to be a poet though, and she was confident that she had the talent to succeed.  Pause to notice Jesus’ eyes the next time you pass a reproduction of The Light of the World.  They are reverent, sensitive, and unyielding—the eyes of a smart young poet perhaps?

* Accurate transcription:  Although Mr. Hunt ’s grammar is a bit dodgy, his main points are understandable.

An older Christina Rossetti: Christina and Her Mother," 1877, chalk
drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  From the National Portrait Gallery,
London, England.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The Music Room

The Indigo Girls sing “In the Bleak Midwinter”…

Reference Sources

Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti

Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska

Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh

The Achievement of Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent

Christina Rossetti (Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom

Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe

Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico

Genius by Harold Bloom

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

The Pre-Raphaelites by Andrea Rose

Victorian Painting by Christopher Wood

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2011 Lee Price

Three Syllables

Midwinter-blogging, essay 8 of 12 blog entries on

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti

A fresco in Cappadocia, Turkey, circa 12^th century.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Three Syllables

The last line of each stanza of Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter” has three syllables, with the stresses falling on the first and third syllables.  Bump-ba-bump.  Here they are:

First stanza:  Long ago.

Second stanza:  Jesus Christ.

Third stanza:  Which adore.

Fourth stanza:  With a kiss.

Fifth stanza:  Give my heart.

All the other 35 lines are longer, most employing a three-beat rhythm as well as a couple that drop to two and a couple that stretch out to four.  The last line is always terse—just three unadorned syllables.  It can be difficult to pick up on the compactness of these lines if you have the familiar Gustav Holst melody lodged in your head.  The song lengthens each of these phrases to put them on a par with the other lines.  It’s nice, but leaves a false impression of the original.

Actually the whole poem is remarkably terse.  There are few frills.  A line like “Frosty wind made moan” is marvelously compact, as is “Earth stood hard as iron.”  Rossetti has been criticized for being too feminine in her writing—insufficiently aggressive—but that complaint seems foreign to this poem.  “Earth stood hard as iron” is lean and mean.  It gives the lie to the fool’s game of assuming gender based on style.  Most would guess the blacksmith wrote it, not the Victorian spinster.

The three kings arrive in
Rozhdestvo (Christmas), a
1996 short film by Russian
animator Mikhail Aldashin.

But nothing beats the last lines of each stanza for minimalist effect.  They close each stanza abruptly, delivering a swift punch line then falling silent.  The close of the first stanza, “Long ago,” propels us into the past (there’s nothing prior to the eighth line to indicate that the poem is taking place long ago).  The close of the third stanza, “Which adore,” conveys the purity of the worshipping animals.  The close of the fourth stanza, “With a kiss,” promotes Mary’s worship above that of angels.

And this brings us to the most important lines of the poem.  This three-syllable line is unusual in Rossetti’s writings and in poetry in general.  It does, however, allow Rossetti to construct the poem’s stanzas around the natural rhythm of “Jesus Christ.”  Each of these last lines duplicates that beat—the rhythm of the name Jesus Christ.  The very devout Christina Rossetti centers her poem on that rhythm.

This rhythm then closes the poem with Rossetti’s no-frills declaration of her gift, spoken to the rhythm of Jesus Christ, “Give my heart.”  These simple last lines exalt their subjects—the barnyard animals, Mary’s gift of a kiss, and Rossetti’s gift of her heart.

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...

That’s the buildup.  Followed by:

Give my heart.

Three syllables, leaving nothing more to be said.

“The Adoration of the Shepherds,” 1646, oil on canvas,

by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), at the

Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The Music Room

The Choir of King’s College sings the slightly less familiar Harold Darke setting of “In the Bleak Midwinter”…

Reference Sources

Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti

Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska

Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh

The Achievement of Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent

Christina Rossetti (Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom

Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe

Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico

Genius by Harold Bloom

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

The Pre-Raphaelites by Andrea Rose

Victorian Painting by Christopher Wood

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2011 Lee Price

Give My Heart

Midwinter-blogging, essay 7 of 12 blog entries on

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti

Give My Heart

Rozhdestvo (Christmas), a 1996 short film by Russian animator
Mikhail Aldashin.

Here’s the fifth and final stanza of Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

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.

 “In the Bleak Midwinter,” fifth stanza

                        Christina Rossetti

Each of the poem’s five stanzas has eight lines.  The second and fourth lines rhyme, as do the sixth and eighth.  In most cases, each of the first seven lines receives three stresses;  a few lines depart from this structure and have four.  The meter is largely driven by trochee—the poetry term for a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.  (The trochee is the reverse of the iamb favored by Shakespeare.)

I find it hard to read the poem without falling into the rhythms of the popular music setting.  But it’s good to remember that these rhythms are not necessarily Rossetti’s.  I think the last stanza nicely demonstrates how the popular Gustav Holst melody alters the way we hear the poem’s original built-in music.

Stained glass from
L'eglise Notre-Dame
de l'Assomption,
Eymet, Dordogne,
France.

In the original poem, the line “What can I give him” receives three stresses:  What, I, and him.  But in the familiar music setting, the first word “What” is drawn out into two syllables, transforming it into a trochee.  This changes the rhythm, resulting in the stresses falling on:  What, can, give (also sung as if it were two syllables with the stress falling on the first), and him.

This isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with the music setting.  The melody is beautiful and the new stresses do no damage to the poem’s meaning.  The only difficulty is in attempting to recover a reading of the line the way Rossetti wrote it—with the stress on the word “I.”

There’s a good reason for the stress to fall on the word “I.”  This concluding stanza takes off in a new direction from the four that precede it.  It collapses the centuries, placing the author on the holy ground of the nativity, forcing her to confront the question:  How should I respond?  It’s a personal question that requires introspection.

When Rossetti writes in the first person in her poems, she frequently deploys a fictional narrator—the “I” is not necessarily Rossetti.  With “In the Bleak Midwinter,” you can’t tell if this is meant to be the case.  The “I” might be Rossetti or might not be.  Personally, I like to think that this really is Rossetti speaking in the first person:  that the question is, “What shall I, Christina Rossetti, give the Christ child?”

The shepherd can give a lamb.  The wise man will give something appropriate (perhaps myrrh, frankincense, or gold if we associate wise man with magi).  Notice how both of Rossetti’s examples are men.  Now we turn to Christina Rossetti.  Growing up middle class in Victorian England, professions were largely closed off to her.  Educational opportunities were limited.  She had little money of her own.  She literally had very little to give, except for the volunteer time that she gave to serving the Anglican church and its missions and, of course, her poetry.

The line “Give my heart” closes the poem, even as it completes her gift of poetry to the child.

"Virgin and Angels Adoring the Christ Child," glazed earthenware,
circa 1460s-70s, by Luca Della Robbia (1400-1482). Frame attributed
to Andrea Della Robbia (1435-1525). From the collection at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Music Room

James Taylor sings “In the Bleak Midwinter”…

Reference Sources

Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti

Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska

Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh

The Achievement of Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent

Christina Rossetti (Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom

Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe

Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico

Genius by Harold Bloom

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

The Pre-Raphaelites by Andrea Rose

Victorian Painting by Christopher Wood

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2011 Lee Price

Angels and Archangels

Midwinter-blogging, essay 6 of 12 blog entries on

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti

Angels and Archangels

Watercolor Illustration by William Blake for

John Milton's On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Angels, archangels, cherubim, and seraphim crowd the Bethlehem sky in Christina Rossetti’s poem “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

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.

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.

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” stanzas 3-4

                        Christina Rossetti

Rossetti was deeply knowledgeable about her Anglican faith so we can trust her to tell a cherubim from a seraphim.  She was also well-read on her poetry, so she knew the literary angels of poets like George Herbert, John Milton, and William Blake.

Since people nowadays aren’t always up on angel lore, here are the basic distinctions:

Angels:  The umbrella term for all the spiritual beings that serve as God’s messengers.

Archangels:  The highest ranked angels.

Cherubim:  Spiritual beings with four faces (lion, ox, eagle, and man) and four wings.

Seraphim:  Fiery six-winged spiritual beings that surround God’s throne.

But even though they signal the holy presence, Rossetti’s angels appear in just two stanzas only to be shunted aside in favor of the terrestrial beings. The breastful of milk and the mangerful of hay rank higher in importance than the worship of angels.  Mary’s kiss is valued more highly, too.  And in my favorite comparison, the baby is content with the ox, the ass, and the camel;  the angels are present but they don’t provide the contentment of the beasts.

Throughout Christian history, there have been debates about the position of angels and humans in the universal hierarchy.  Are humans higher than angels or is it vice versa?  Or are angels separate from the hierarchy, so ethereal in their nature that an infinite number can dance upon the head of a pin?

“Birth of Christ,” oil on canvas, 1597,

by Federico Barocci (c. 1526-1612),

from the Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The eighth psalm places man “a little lower than angels,” but some Christian theologians suggest that the incarnation of Jesus as man may have exalted man’s status above the angels.  After all, Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?”

Rossetti seems prepared to begin judging the angels now.  She approves their presence as they crowd around the nativity, but casts her lot with the ox, the ass, and the camel.



The Music Room

Isabel Suckling, known as the Choirgirl, sings “In the Bleak Midwinter”  Up until this point, all the performers in our Midwinter Music Room have sung the Gustav Holst arrangement.  Isabel sings the equally beautiful Harold Darke arrangement.

Reference Sources

Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti

Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska

Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh

The Achievement of Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent

Christina Rossetti (Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom

Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe

Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico

Genius by Harold Bloom

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

The Pre-Raphaelites by Andrea Rose

Victorian Painting by Christopher Wood

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2011 Lee Price

The Paradoxes

Midwinter-blogging, essay 5 of 12 blog entries on

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti

The Paradoxes

Mosaic mural depicting the Nativity by Manuel Perez Paredes in the

Nuestro Señor del Veneno Temple on Carranza Street in Mexico City.

Source:  Wikimedia Commons.

Christina Rossetti establishes the bleak setting in the first stanza of “In the Bleak Midwinter.”  The next three stanzas all play with a central paradox that obviously delights Rossetti:

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.

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.

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.

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” stanzas 2-4

                        Christina Rossetti

Each of these stanzas contrasts the infinity of heaven with the cramped poverty of a stable.  More to the point, they contrast the incomprehensible vastness of the nature of God with the tiny newborn baby.  This is Rossetti’s favorite paradox:  the Lord God Almighty—omnipotent and omniscient—compacted into a fragile child.

Many poets have explored this Christian paradox.  My favorite is John Donne, the 16th century English metaphysical poet perhaps best known for his famous sermon line, “No man is an island…”  Donne loved paradoxes and frequently worked his poems around them.  He wrote a 21-sonnet series called “La Corona” which includes a sonnet focused on this particular paradox inherent in the nativity.

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,

Now leaves his welbelov'd imprisonment,

There he hath made himself to his intent

Weak enough, now into our world to come;

But Oh, for thee, for him, hath th'Inne no roome?

Yet lay him in this stall, and from the Orient,

Stars, and wisemen will travel to prevent

Th'effect of Herod's jealous general doom;

Seest thou, my Soul, with thy faith's eyes, how he

Which fills all place, yet none holds him, doth lie?

Was not his pity towards thee wondrous high,

That would have need to be pitied by thee?

Kiss him, and with him into Egypt goe,

With his kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

                        “Nativity”

                        John Donne

While Rossetti is content to contrast the infinite nature of God with the stable, Donne goes even further by starting with the infinite inside the womb.  Once Jesus is in the stable, Donne continues to stress God’s nature “Which fills all place…”  This is the exact same paradox that Rossetti embraces when she envisions a God so great that even “Heaven cannot hold him.”

To use a modern metaphor that would have been completely alien to both Donne and Rossetti, the baby is like the image of an unimaginably compacted universe in the instant before the big bang.  The power within is infinite.  The size infinitesimal.

Detail of "Crucifixion, Nativity, Annunciation," unknown artist,
possibly made in Padua, Italy, circa 1320-30, from the collection of
the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Music Room

Norwegian a capella group The Funka sing “In the Bleak Midwinter,” including Norwegian lyrics…

Reference Sources

Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti

Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska

Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh

The Achievement of Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent

Christina Rossetti (Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom

Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe

Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico

Genius by Harold Bloom

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

The Pre-Raphaelites by Andrea Rose

Victorian Painting by Christopher Wood

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2011 Lee Price