Carol of the Day: In the Bleak Midwinter
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath
I should know more about Christina Rossetti, for I know very little, and her poetry has moved me many times. I quick review of her Wikipedia page makes me even more curious. She never intended this poem to be set to music, and yet it has received two of the most beautiful ones by Holst and Darke.
My first—and favorite—poem of hers is Echo:
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!
Harold Darke was an organist in London. His tenure at the Church of St. Michael, Cornhill was from 1916 to...1966. That's longevity.
