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“Glad is the world and fair this night”

“Glad is the world and fair this night”

Last updated on: December 24, 2024 at 12:25 pm by Dan Peterson

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“Glad is the world and fair this night” 2024-12-24T12:25:16-07:00 Dan Peterson

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The twelfth-century St Enodoc’s Church, Trebetheric, Cornwall, where Sir John Betjeman is buried. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I think it’s time to share another of my favorite Christmas poems. Curiously, the poem is titled “Christmas.” It was written by Sir John Betjeman (b. 1906), who was British poet laureate from 1972 until his death in 1984:

The bells of waiting Advent ring,

The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

The Hopperstad Stave Church, in Vik, Norway, was constructed around AD 1130. Lingering Viking influence appears, among other places, in the dragons that decorate its roof.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

And, just yesterday, in a Facebook post from someone named Neal Fant, I came across another interesting poem. It was written by one J. R. R. Tolkien nearly a century ago, before he had written The Hobbit. Surprisingly, the poem was discovered only in 2013, by a pair of Tolkien scholars named Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull. While examining a 1936 edition of the Catholic journal The Tablet, they came across mention of two Tolkien poems that had been published in the Abingdon Annual of Our Lady’s School, a Roman Catholic institution that is still located in Abingdon-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. Officials at the school helped them to locate the Annual, which was, by then, nearly eighty years old.

As Mr. Fant puts it, although “Noel” was written in 1936, it “feels like it was written during the days of old for reading in one of the old Norse stave churches.” Such a perception is not altogether unexpected, given Professor Tolkien’s academic focus a leading scholar of Anglo-Saxon and northern medieval literature:

Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains’ teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.

The lord of snows upreared his head;
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o’er hill and dale.
The world was blind,
the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.

The ancient dome of heaven sheer
Was pricked with distant light;
A star came shining white and clear
Alone above the night.
In the dale of dark in that hour of birth
One voice on a sudden sang:
Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth
Together at midnight rang.

Mary sang in this world below:
They heard her song arise
O’er mist and over mountain snow
To the walls of Paradise,
And the tongue of many bells was stirred
in Heaven’s towers to ring
When the voice of mortal maid was heard,
That was mother of Heaven’s King.

Glad is the world and fair this night
With stars about its head,
And the hall is filled with laughter and light,
And fires are burning red.
The bells of Paradise now ring
With bells of Christendom,
And Gloria, Gloria we will sing
That God on earth is come.

The ruins of Coventry Cathedral — the Cathedral Church of St. Michael — after a rainstorm in a Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph. The fourteenth-century Gothic church was destroyed on 14 November 1940 by the German Luftwaffe. The new cathedral was consecrated in May 1962, and is very partially visible to the left. Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” was written for the occasion.

Here’s a fun little piece for the Winter Solstice holiday: “A Rabbi Ranks All the Great Christmas Songs Written By Jews: From ‘Let It Snow’ to ‘Rudolph’ to ‘Santa Baby.’” I’m afraid, though, that it’s just a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Because now — brace yourself for the horror to come! — it’s time for yet another selection of Christmas music that I’ve drawn from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™. This is the so-called “Coventry Carol,” performed by the Columbine Chorale in its original 1591 version:

Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child
Bye bye, lully, lullay
O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
“Bye bye, lully, lullay?”
Herod the king, in his raging
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay
That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing
“Bye bye, lully, lullay.”
Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child
Bye bye, lully, lullay

Merry Christmas to all!

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