Hymns are poetry set to music for congregational singing. As poetry, we read them with the heart as well as with the mind, with imagination as well as with examination. Poetry is a different form of literature than narrative or theology. And biblically, we interpret poetry with a different set of guidelines than those we would use to understand the inspired history in Genesis and Acts, or the inspired sermons in Isaiah and Jeremiah, or the theology of Romans and Hebrews, or the liturgical material in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, or the evangelistic focus of Gospels like Matthew and John, or the instructional passages in didactic books like Job and Proverbs, and certainly from the apocryphal style of Daniel and Revelation. (By the way, there is certainly rich doctrine in every literary style used in Scripture, but strictly speaking, it is expressed differently in each of those styles.)
And that is no more true than in dealing with inspired poetry such as what we find in passages of the prophets and even more so in the Psalms. Just as with non-inspired poetry, we recognize that there needs to be a significant degree of liberty granted to the author as he or she writes with the imagination. We call it “poetic license.” There are figures of speech that make us think and picture what is said, and what is meant by those vivid word pictures. The author knew that mountains don’t sing and God doesn’t have eyes rolling around across the countryside or hands holding His covenant people! In the hymn “Loved with Everlasting Love,” we know that “heav’n above” is not actually “deeper blue,” and that “earth around” is not actually “sweeter green.” But we understand what is meant by those hyperboles.
This is why “hermeneutics” is an important discipline for correctly understanding the meaning of a passage. And that’s not just true for teachers and preachers. It’s something about which everyone who reads the Bible ought to have a basic awareness. Wisdom literature, homiletical sermons, prophetic writings, Gospel narratives, and epistolary letters, as well as poetry each have principles for interpretation that are necessary to “rightly divide the word of truth.” There are helpful books accessible for lay readers to assist them in sharpening their hermeneutical skills.
When we see the format in which hymns are printed, with the text stretched out, line-by-line, between the staves of music, we can miss the fact that the hymn text is a poem. In fact, many of our hymns were poems long before anyone set the words to music. It would be helpful occasionally to look at the hymn text written out as a poem, stanza by stanza, rather than crammed into the space between the lines of music. To do so will immediately open your eyes to a richer sense of its beauty as well as its truth.
One of the most beautifully expressive hymn/poems is Christina Rossetti’s lovely “In the Bleak Mid-Winter,” first published in 1872 when she was in her early 40s. It is unlikely that Jesus was born in the winter of first century Israel. And even if He was, it might have been a beautiful, crisp morning with blue skies and bright sunshine, not actually so bleak. And what about “snow on snow,” since snow is quite rare in that part of the world, and even on those rare occasions it would be barely more than a dusting. The earth would not have been actually “hard as iron,” nor the “water like a stone.” But this is poetry! It points us to the spiritual and psychological bleakness of the time, the hardness of life in those days of longing for deliverance from Roman oppression and for the warm sunshine of the Messiah’s arrival.
Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) was an English writer of devotional, children’s and romantic poems. Her parents were Italian immigrants. She was born in London and lived her life in that city. She became part of the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Anglican Church. At age 14, she suffered a nervous breakdown and left school. Periods of depression and related illness followed, including hyperthyroidism (Graves’ disease) and then breast cancer in her final year. When her father’s health deteriorated because of tuberculosis, their financial situation also declined. He had to give up his teaching career, having been a professor of Italian at King’s College, Cambridge, and a Dante scholar. She pursued writing poetry, she assisted in gospel ministry to ex-prostitutes in the city, and also volunteered with the Anglican missionary ministry, “Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge” (SPCK). Though she received two marriage proposals, doctrinal convictions led her to reject them (the first because he was Roman Catholic), and thus she remained single, living a life of contentment in service to the Lord.
Two of her best-known poems are this carol and “Love Came Down at Christmas.” She wrote masterfully with style and vocabulary that were easily comprehended by children readers, and later, singers. Her works could hardly be called simplistic in the sense of being shallow, and yet they were simple in the sense of not being complicated and being immediately understandable at first reading or hearing. “In the Bleak Mid-Winter” is not complicated, abstract theology, though it is filled with rich evangelical doctrine. It’s about simple, specific things like snow, wind, water, and hay. This style of poetic expression draws the reader’s imagination into the scene. Good poetry like this almost startles the reader, forcing us to stop and take notice of the nativity details.
Her popularity during her lifetime did not match that of her Victorian contemporaries, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). Though her renown faded in the early 20th century, it has been greatly revived through this Christmas carol, with its lyrical sweetness, especially after being set to music in 1906, 12 years after her death, by Gustav Holst (1874-1934). He was a prolific composer, well-known for his orchestral suite, “The Planets.” His tune for Rossetti’s hymn appeared in “The English Hymnal” that year, and has spread in popularity to become one of the best-loved carols of the season. In fact, many choirmasters consider it the world’s best Christmas carol for its beauty, simplicity, and tender appeal to the heart.
The stark language of the poem belies the intensity and complexity of its imagery and feeling. Indeed, beneath a deceptively simple surface, at the heart of the poem is a profound paradox. The juxtaposition of simple, earthly elements against the ineffability of the incarnation points toward the very crux of Christmas: might made humble, Word become flesh, God with us. In this poem, as in the body of Rossetti’s works, the material world of nature reveals transcendent spiritual reality. Hence the mother’s simple kiss is an act of worship of the one true God.
Plain words, echoed by resonant rhythms and sounds, serve as a foil to the brilliance of the poem’s theological insights. Even while universalizing the biblical narrative of Christ’s birth by transferring the scene at Bethlehem to a snowy Victorian Christmas, the poem remains steeped in Scripture. “Our God, heaven cannot hold Him, Nor earth sustain” restates 1 Kings 8:27: “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain You. How much less this temple I have built!” The vision foretold in Revelation 20:11 is repeated in the lines, “Heaven and earth shall flee away, When He comes to reign.”
Once again, this is theology and history told at a level for children, but equally instructive and moving for adults. Listen to it with a child’s believing heart.
Stanza 1 takes us there to Bethlehem to set the scene for this miraculous invasion of the God-man into our world. The words Rossetti chose are vivid and create an atmosphere that matches the condition of the world into which the Savior came from His glorious heavenly throne … bleak, frosty, moan, hard, iron, stone, snow. Such was not only the condition of the world, but also every human heart into which the Savior has come to bring spiritual life where there was spiritual death.
In the bleak midwinter
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.
Stanza 2 looks closely at the stable into which the Son of God, the second person of the holy Trinity, has come. The one who fills all creation with His existence and upholds all creation by the word of His power, this God, though ‘heaven cannot hold Him,” was confined in the womb of a teenage virgin, and then confined in a stable. We remember the words spoken by Queen Lucy in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia chronicle, “In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”
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.
Stanza 3 lifts the eyes of heart to look from a higher perspective than the manger-side, and to stand in amazement at what we behold. This one “whom cherubim worship night and day” is here satisfied in His incarnate infancy with “a breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay.” The contrast is vivid, and clear to the child who sings it. It is no longer the angels who “fall down before” Him, but rather “the ox and camel” who adore the Christ-child.
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.
Stanza 4 intensifies the astonishing contrast, again in terms that a child can picture, even if not fully understand. Unseen, except to the shepherds in the fields, were the heavenly host Luke records. Rossetti reminds us what that host would have included: “angels and archangels,” “cherubim and seraphim.” What glorious splendor must have filled the sky that night, and what glorious sound must have erupted from their celestial voices as they “thronged the air.” And here is the contrast, suitable for the child’s mind … all of that regal, majestic celebration, and then a mother bending low to not only kiss her child, but to do so with worship. And while today’s child may not grasp it, we realize that here is a child being worshipped by the woman He created!
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.
Stanza 5 is the best-known part of the song. These lyrics are recognizable by almost everyone, even those who may not realize the carol from which they are drawn. Here is Christina Rossetti at her devotional best as a lover of the Lord Jesus, one who joins Mary and the shepherds and the angels in worshipful adoration of the Lord of glory. As we sing it, we ask ourselves the question, “What can I give Him?” I am poor; I can offer nothing of value. I am not even a shepherd; I have no lamb worthy of the Lamb of God. I am certainly not a wise man; it is because of my sinful foolishness that He has come. And yet there is something that He desires and cherishes, something that even a child can give; “I give Him – my 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 –
Give my heart.
Here is a beautiful, unadorned singing of the carol from Trinity College, Cambridge. This is Harold Darke’s classic arrangement, using just stanzas 1, 2, 3 and 5.