In the Bleak Midwinter

I set out to read a little about my favorite Christmas carol (yes, even more so than "Silent Night") and found this lovely painting entitled "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin" by Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It depicts Mary and her apocryphal mother, St. Anne. The models were his mother, Frances, and his sister, Christina Rossetti.

Which brings me to Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) and her lovely poem, entitled "A Christmas Carol" when it first was published in 1872, now most familiarly known in its Gustav Holst setting as "In the Bleak Midwinter."

Of course there are oddities --- Rossetti lifts the traditional Christmas narrative out of its usual setting, Bethlehem (where the average December temperature is in the mid-50s), into the frozen northland, for example.

But I know of no other carol that uses the English language so gloriously and so evocatively --- yet so simply. Here's the text:

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.

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.

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.

And here's a 2010 performance by the Cleveland Quire, an ensemble headquartered as you might guess in our neighbor to the east, Ohio.