30 Great poems

Today's Times features a pull out with thirty poems everyone should know. Good choices on the whole.

1. We’ll Go No More A-Roving by Lord Byron So, we’ll go no more a-roving
2. I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman I hear America singing, the varied carols
3. Poor Old Lady by Anon Poor old lady, she swallowed a fly...
4. Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone...
5. Crossing The Bar by Alfred, Lord Tennyson Sunset and evening star...
6. The Song of Mr Toad by Kenneth Grahame The world has held great Heroes...
7. If by Rudyard Kipling If you can keep your head when all about you...
8. Remember by Christina Rossetti Remember me when I am gone away...
9. Daffodils by William Wordsworth I wandered lonely as a cloud...
10. The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to...
11. Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge In Xanadu did Kubla Khan...
12. Invictus by W.E. Henley Out of the night that covers me...
13. How Soon Hath Time by John Milton How soon hath Time, the subtle thief...
14. The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow I shot an arrow into...
15. Answer to a Child’s Question by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Do you ask what...
16. Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day...
17. The Soldier by Rupert Brooke If I should die, think only this of me...
18. To Autumn by John Keats Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
19. Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen Bent double, like old beggars...
20. A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
21. Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land...
22. He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W B Yeats Had I the heavens’...
23. The Tyger by William Blake Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, In the forest of the night
24. Death Be Not Proud by John Donne Death be not proud, though some have...
25. Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson Hope is the thing with...
26. Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves...
27. How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning How do I love thee? Let me...
28. Love and Friendship by Emily Brontë Love is like the wild rose-briar...
29. Jerusalem by William Blake And did those feet in ancient time...
30. The Elephant by Hilaire Belloc When people call this beast to mind

In the bleak midwinter

I heard somewhere that In the bleak midwinter was voted best Christmas hymn again - for the tune I think. The words are good too. Previously blogged here and here.

Holiday Gem 04

4. In the bleak midwinter by Bert Jansch.

This 1974 single is a very pleasant rendition of Christina Rosetti's hymn by the well respected Scots folk guitarist who first came to prominence in the sixties with the group Pentangle (Light flight, etc). I discussed the hymn last Christmas

here

I discovered this version of the hymn on tape 2 of the cassette version of The Best Christmas Album in the World ... Ever!

In the Bleak Midwinter

Beginning to preach on Christmas themes today I was trying to describe how bleak things were in Israel just before Christ came. As I was trying to conjure it up, the hymn by Christian Rossetti (1830-1894), sister of the Pre-Raphaelite Rossetti brothers, came to mind. It begins

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 midwinter, Long time ago.

I like the hymn I must confess (I have a favourite version by Bert Jansch) but disliked the emphasis on the weather. Who knows whether it was snowing anyway? On reflection, I guess that Rossetti's point is not meteorological but metaphorical. She is using the ice and snow to picture the hardness and sin that characterised those times in Israel.

It is the same in C S Lewis's first Narnia story where the faun Mr Tumnus speaks to Lucy about the evil witch and famously says 'It's she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!'
(Rossetti's poem was written before 1872 and published posthumously in her Poetic Works (1904). It appeared in The English Hymnal 1906. She apparently wrote these words in response to a request from the magazine Scribner’s Monthly for a Christmas poem.
Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the second book in the series and the first to be published. It appeared in 1950. The quote is from Chapter 2).