I read "nor earth sustain" as another gesture toward his own infinity, as well as his self-sufficiency, vs. creation's insufficiency (especially relative to God). IF he needed anything, the earth could not supply it. HE sustains IT --- never vice versa.
I needed this today -- thank you, Sally, for the lovely poem and your lovely explication that makes it so much more than a quick read might show. I have been singing another of Rossetti's carols all morning -- "Love Came Down" -- and together they open up a hope that is helpful for me in the face of a difficult situation for a loved one. However bleak our winter may seem, He is here; He came down to meet us where we needed Him. Merry Christmas to you and Jody!
I love this poem and Holst's arrangement, perhaps just because it's familiar to me.
Until the final stanza, the last line of each stanza has 9 syllables (Perhaps arbitrarily, I read the last line of the 3rd stanza like this: "Th'ox and ass and camel which adore.") For me, these short pentameter lines effectively end the stanzas and add to the charm and power of the poem.
Try as I might, I can't turned the next-to-last line of the 3rd stanza into hexameter. I haven't tried to find an online edition of Rosetti's poems, but a hasty bit of research suggests that the line may have been "Enough for Him, for whom angels fall down before."
I hear that line fairly accentually --- eNOUGH for HIM whom ANgels FALL DOWN beFORE. At any rate, in both the sung versions I'm familiar with (Holst and Darke), the line *sings* the same as all the others.
In the original magazine version, the lines you have here are split into two short lines. Is the version you’ve shared how it appears later in her own poetry collection (complete with the omission of “down” in that line)?
There’s something profoundly charming about the repeated “snow on snow”, and rhythmically distinctive too, in how it divides the hexameter into three pairs of beats.
I’m struck by the colour palette of this. The only colour apart from white is, perhaps, ‘iron’—although here invoked for its hardness rather than its greyness—but otherwise: the midwinter is ‘bleak’, a word cognate to blank, blanched, bleached (from Middle English blak, blac “pale, wan”, and Old English blǣc, “pale, pallid”); the white snow is falling, and its fall is reiterated, making the whole world white; in the stable Jesus is fed with white milk and the shepherd brings a white lamb as gift. No other colours are mentioned. We might say that winter is a white kind of season, at least in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere—though surely not in the Holy Land—but a carol like ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, invoking the very non-Galilean holly bush, at least brings in the red berries as symbolic of the blood Christ will shed. Not this poem. The whiteness perhaps speaks to purity, holiness, of mother and baby, but I wonder if the colour scheme, or mono-colour scheme, doesn’t leach into all the elements mentioned: as if the angels and archangels, the cherubim and seraphim, become whitened by association, made of glass. Or the segue from stanza one (‘snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow’) to stanza two—‘Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain/Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign’—doesn’t suggest, obliquely, that God is descending to the earth (since Heaven cannot hold him) *as snow*, falling through the air as a cold white particulate purity—which earth cannot ‘sustain’, since nothing grows in winter, and God’s reign suggesting its homonym rain, which is what snow in its frozen way is. In line three the word snow is repeated five times; the poem has five stanzas; Christ on the cross suffered five wounds.
One of my favorite poems/songs.
Lovely. The poem and your analysis.
I love the repetition of snow on snow, snow on snow.
One thing I wonder about, Rossetti's use of sustain to rhyme with reign.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
I have a hard time understanding what it means that the earth cannot sustain Him.
I admire this rhyme immensely: sufficed with Christ!
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
I read "nor earth sustain" as another gesture toward his own infinity, as well as his self-sufficiency, vs. creation's insufficiency (especially relative to God). IF he needed anything, the earth could not supply it. HE sustains IT --- never vice versa.
Beautiful commentary. My favourite substack!
Thanks for being here!
Lovely. Reminds me of Coleridge's line in Frost at Midnight: "He shall mould thy spirit, and by giving make it ask."
Great connection --- to one of my all-time favorite poems!
We just had a baby girl, so I've been memorizing the last two stanzas as a lullaby / benediction of sorts
Congratulations!
I needed this today -- thank you, Sally, for the lovely poem and your lovely explication that makes it so much more than a quick read might show. I have been singing another of Rossetti's carols all morning -- "Love Came Down" -- and together they open up a hope that is helpful for me in the face of a difficult situation for a loved one. However bleak our winter may seem, He is here; He came down to meet us where we needed Him. Merry Christmas to you and Jody!
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to you!
I love this poem and Holst's arrangement, perhaps just because it's familiar to me.
Until the final stanza, the last line of each stanza has 9 syllables (Perhaps arbitrarily, I read the last line of the 3rd stanza like this: "Th'ox and ass and camel which adore.") For me, these short pentameter lines effectively end the stanzas and add to the charm and power of the poem.
Try as I might, I can't turned the next-to-last line of the 3rd stanza into hexameter. I haven't tried to find an online edition of Rosetti's poems, but a hasty bit of research suggests that the line may have been "Enough for Him, for whom angels fall down before."
I hear that line fairly accentually --- eNOUGH for HIM whom ANgels FALL DOWN beFORE. At any rate, in both the sung versions I'm familiar with (Holst and Darke), the line *sings* the same as all the others.
In the original magazine version, the lines you have here are split into two short lines. Is the version you’ve shared how it appears later in her own poetry collection (complete with the omission of “down” in that line)?
There’s something profoundly charming about the repeated “snow on snow”, and rhythmically distinctive too, in how it divides the hexameter into three pairs of beats.
I’m struck by the colour palette of this. The only colour apart from white is, perhaps, ‘iron’—although here invoked for its hardness rather than its greyness—but otherwise: the midwinter is ‘bleak’, a word cognate to blank, blanched, bleached (from Middle English blak, blac “pale, wan”, and Old English blǣc, “pale, pallid”); the white snow is falling, and its fall is reiterated, making the whole world white; in the stable Jesus is fed with white milk and the shepherd brings a white lamb as gift. No other colours are mentioned. We might say that winter is a white kind of season, at least in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere—though surely not in the Holy Land—but a carol like ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, invoking the very non-Galilean holly bush, at least brings in the red berries as symbolic of the blood Christ will shed. Not this poem. The whiteness perhaps speaks to purity, holiness, of mother and baby, but I wonder if the colour scheme, or mono-colour scheme, doesn’t leach into all the elements mentioned: as if the angels and archangels, the cherubim and seraphim, become whitened by association, made of glass. Or the segue from stanza one (‘snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow’) to stanza two—‘Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain/Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign’—doesn’t suggest, obliquely, that God is descending to the earth (since Heaven cannot hold him) *as snow*, falling through the air as a cold white particulate purity—which earth cannot ‘sustain’, since nothing grows in winter, and God’s reign suggesting its homonym rain, which is what snow in its frozen way is. In line three the word snow is repeated five times; the poem has five stanzas; Christ on the cross suffered five wounds.
Wow, yes. Fascinating tracking of a pattern I hadn't taken into account at all.
And it does read something like a version, in language, of a black-and-white lithograph of a Fra Angelico Nativity.
Those are some intriguing observations!
"The child needs no gift." But a charity ham might well be appreciated. IYKYK