Christmas, Part Eight: "A Merry Christmas, Friend!"

A Thomas Hardy ghost story:

"He saw a ghost in Stinsford Churchyard on Christmas Eve, and his sister Kate says it must have been their grandfather upon whose grave T. H. had just placed a sprig of holly -- the first time he had ever done so.  The ghost said:  'A green Christmas' -- T. H. replied 'I like a green Christmas.'  Then the ghost went into the church, and, being full of curiosity, T. followed, to see who this strange man in 18th century dress might be -- and found -- no-one.  That is quite true -- a real Christmas ghost story."

Florence Hardy, letter to Sydney Cockerell, in Michael Millgate (editor), Letters of Emma and Florence Hardy (Oxford University Press 1996).

How like Hardy!  Rather than being frightened out of his wits, he matter-of-factly converses with the spirit as if it was nothing out of the ordinary, blithely responding:  "I like a green Christmas."  Wonderful.  Just like one of his poems.

Harry Bush (1883-1957), "The Christmas Tree" (1933)

The fact that Hardy's ghost conversation took place on Christmas Eve fits well with his Christmas poems, which often have a foggy, gloomy setting, and which are usually marked by the presence of wraiths or wraith-like humans.  This is true of the following two poems, and yet the poems have an oddly cheerful feeling to them -- proving that Hardy is no Scrooge.

     A Nightmare, and the Next Thing

On this decline of Christmas Day
The empty street is fogged and blurred:
The house-fronts all seem backwise turned
As if the outer world were spurned:
Voices and songs within are heard,
Whence red rays gleam when fires are stirred,
Upon this nightmare Christmas Day.

The lamps, just lit, begin to outloom
Like dandelion-globes in the gloom;
The stonework, shop-signs, doors, look bald;
Curious crude details seem installed,
And show themselves in their degrees
As they were personalities
Never discerned when the street was bustling
With vehicles, and farmers hustling.

Three clammy casuals wend their way
To the Union House.  I hear one say:
"Jimmy, this is a treat!  Hay-hay!"

Six laughing mouths, six rows of teeth,
Six radiant pairs of eyes, beneath
Six yellow hats, looking out at the back
Of a waggonette on its slowed-down track
Up the steep street to some gay dance,
Suddenly interrupt my glance.

They do not see a gray nightmare
Astride the day, or anywhere.

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).  A "casual" was either an occasional laborer with no fixed employment or someone who was in need of temporary charitable relief.  The "Union House" was the workhouse in Dorchester, Dorset.

The poem, with its empty, foggy street and its lamps "like dandelion-globes in the gloom" (a lovely description), has a Dickensian "nightmare" feel to it.   But Hardy never states exactly what the "nightmare" is.

Ben Nicholson (1894-1982), "1930 (Christmas Night)" (1930)

The following poem is a variation on the same theme.

               Christmastide

The rain-shafts splintered on me
     As despondently I strode;
The twilight gloomed upon me
     And bleared the blank high-road.
Each bush gave forth, when blown on
     By gusts in shower and shower,
A sigh, as it were sown on
     In handfuls by a sower.

A cheerful voice called, nigh me,
     "A merry Christmas, friend!" --
There rose a figure by me,
     Walking with townward trend,
A sodden tramp's, who, breaking
     Into thin song, bore straight
Ahead, direction taking
     Toward the Casuals' gate.

Thomas Hardy, Ibid.  The "Casuals' gate" was one of the entryways to the Union House mentioned above.

Which in turn leads me to say to all of you whose visits here throughout the year are much-appreciated:  "A merry Christmas, friend!"

Robin Tanner (1904-1988), "Christmas" (1929)

Christmas, Part Seven: "Out In The Dark"

Edward Thomas wrote the following poem on December 24, 1916:  his last Christmas Eve in England; his last Christmas Eve.  He was killed at the Battle of Arras less than four months later.

Given these circumstances, there is a temptation to, in retrospect, read things into the poem that are perhaps not there.  In fact, the subject and the emotional tenor of the poem are characteristic of the Edward Thomas that one comes to know from all of his poems.  His personality is evident throughout the poem.  In this regard, I refer you in particular to a phrase in the final line that is quintessential (and lovely) Thomas:  "if you love it not."  The entire poem turns upon those words.

                                    Samuel Palmer, "The Bellman" (1879)

       Out in the Dark

Out in the dark over the snow
The fallow fawns invisible go
With the fallow doe;
And the winds blow
Fast as the stars are slow.

Stealthily the dark haunts round
And, when a lamp goes, without sound
At a swifter bound
Than the swiftest hound,
Arrives, and all else is drowned;

And star and I and wind and deer
Are in the dark together, -- near,
Yet far, -- and fear
Drums on my ear
In that sage company drear.

How weak and little is the light,
All the universe of sight,
Love and delight,
Before the might,
If you love it not, of night.

Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books 2008).

               Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), "Snow Falling on a Town"

After Thomas's death, his wife Helen sent a volume of his posthumously-published poetry to Thomas Hardy.  Hardy wrote a letter to her thanking her for the gift, and praising the poetry.  Later, Hardy wrote the following poem.

 The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House

One without looks in to-night
        Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
        As we sit and think
        By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
        Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
        Wondering, aglow,
        Fourfooted, tiptoe.

Thomas Hardy, Late Lyrics and Earlier (1922).

It is nice to think that Hardy may have written the poem with "Out in the Dark" in mind.  However, to my knowledge, there is no direct evidence that this is the case.

                                          Robin Tanner, "Christmas" (1929)

Christmas, Part Six: "The Hearth"

R. S. Thomas was never one to mince words.  Thus, not surprisingly, his Christmas poems (several of which I have posted here previously) have a touch of Thomas's fierceness to them.  But they also have an undercurrent of peace and serenity.  (Again, not surprisingly.  Thomas was not as much of a curmudgeon as he is sometimes made out to be.  Yes, he often presents a fairly brusque and forbidding surface, but this often serves as a mask, I think.)

The following poem is an instance of what I am trying to describe:  a bit of peace, a bit of serenity, even a whisper of love -- and a dose of fierceness for good measure.  There is nobody quite like R. S. Thomas.

                                     Stanley Spencer, "Fire Alight" (1936)

            The Hearth

In front of the fire
With you, the folk song
Of the wind in the chimney and the sparks'
Embroidery of the soot -- eternity
Is here in this small room,
In intervals that our love
Widens; and outside
Us is time and the victims
Of time, travellers
To a new Bethlehem, statesmen
And scientists with their hands full
Of the gifts that destroy.

R. S. Thomas, H'm (1972).

                                                  Charles Mahoney
                  "Christmas Tree Viewed Through Red Curtains" (c. 1952)

Christmas, Part Five: "I Should Go With Him In The Gloom, Hoping It Might Be So"

In my previous post I suggested that any (alleged) pessimism in Thomas Hardy's world-view is free of cynicism and misanthropy.  Take, for example, the following poem.  Hardy wrote the poem when he was 75.  It was first published in The Times on December 24, 1915, when the ever-increasing horror of the First World War had become manifest.  When the poem was reprinted in subsequent editions of his poetry, Hardy included "1915" as a subscript, presumably as a reminder of the historical context in which the poem was written.

                          Ben Nicholson, "1930 (Christmas Night)" (1930)

                    The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
     'Now they are all on their knees,'
An elder said as we sat in a flock
     By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
     They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
     To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
     In these years!  Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
     'Come; see the oxen kneel

'In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
     Our childhood used to know,'
I should go with him in the gloom,
     Hoping it might be so.

     1915

Thomas Hardy, Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917).  A "barton" is a farmyard.  A "coomb" is, according to the OED, "a deep hollow or valley."

I take Hardy on his word.  At some point in his life he lost his faith.  But there is no mockery in the poem.  There is no air of superiority.  There is no implicit "who would believe that!"

I am in complete agreement with him.  Yes, it is true:  "So fair a fancy few would weave/In these years!"  We moderns are quite sophisticated, as well as unillusioned and undeceived, aren't we?  But a question remains:  would you or would you not "go with him in the gloom/Hoping it might be so"?

                                    Edvard Munch, "Starry Night" (1893)

Christmas, Part Four: "The Reminder"

Thomas Hardy is often described as a pessimist.  But, as I have noted before, one person's pessimism is another person's realism.  The way I see it, Hardy did not avert his eyes and he faithfully reported what he saw.

Moreover, Hardy was neither a cynic nor a misanthrope.  Yes, he may have come to gloomy conclusions about how Life and the Universe run their course.  However, his empathy and his fellow-feeling (a phrase that seems quaint in these times) are apparent throughout his poetry.

                Elizabeth Kenyon, "The River Stour from Stratford St. Mary"

            The Reminder

While I watch the Christmas blaze
Paint the room with ruddy rays,
Something makes my vision glide
To the frosty scene outside.

There, to reach a rotting berry,
Toils a thrush, -- constrained to very
Dregs of food by sharp distress,
Taking such with thankfulness.

Why, O starving bird, when I
One day's joy would justify,
And put misery out of view,
Do you make me notice you!

Thomas Hardy, Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (1909).

The following passage by David Cecil is apt:

"Summarised in cold print, Hardy's view of life would suggest that his poems are depressing reading.  Perhaps they ought to be; but they are not. Books that depress are written by those who do not respond to life, who are unable to enjoy or appreciate or love.  Hardy on the contrary was unusually able to enjoy and appreciate and love.  Indeed his tragic sense comes from the tension he feels between his sense of man's capacity for joy and his realisation that this is all too often disastrously thwarted.
. . . . .
His poems bear the recognisable stamp of his personality, simple, sublime, lovable.  Here we come to the central secret of the spell he casts.  It compels us because it brings us into immediate contact with a spirit that commands our hearts as well as our admiration. . . . His integrity is absolute.  He faces life at its darkest, he is vigilant never to soften or to sentimentalise; yet he never strikes a note of hardness or brutality.  His courage in facing hard facts is equalled by his capacity to pity and sympathise."

David Cecil, "The Hardy Mood," in F. B. Pinion (editor), Thomas Hardy and the Modern World (1974).

                   Elizabeth Kenyon, "Kennels Corner, Stratford St. Mary"

Cecil's remarks about Hardy's "integrity" bring to mind Thom Gunn's comment (which I have previously posted here) that, when reading Hardy's poetry, he had a "feeling of contact with an honest man who will never lie to me."  Thom Gunn, "Hardy and the Ballads," The Occasions of Poetry: Essays in Criticism and Autobiography (North Point Press 1982), page 105.

I am also reminded of Kingsley Amis's comment on Edward Thomas, which has also appeared here before, but is worth revisiting:

"How a poet convinces you he will not tell you anything he does not think or feel, since you have only his word for it, is hard to discover, but Edward Thomas is one of those who do it."

Kingsley Amis, The Amis Anthology: A Personal Choice of English Verse (1988), page 339.

Thomas Hardy and Edward Thomas are, I think, two of a kind.

                         Elizabeth Kenyon, "The Meadows, Higham Church"

Christmas, Part Three: "Christmas, Someone Mentioned, Is Almost Upon Us"

The following poem by Patrick Kavanagh comes from the period of high spirits that he experienced in the mid- to late-1950s following his successful surgery for lung cancer in the spring of 1955.  As I have noted in previous posts, Kavanagh experienced a poetic rebirth during this period, and his poems of the time are marked by ecstatic verbal flights about the wonder and beauty of Life and of the World.

In this case, the approach of Christmas sends him off on unexpected, but beguiling, tangents.

                            Eliot Hodgkin, "Two Hyacinth Bulbs" (1966)

                                   Winter

Christmas, someone mentioned, is almost upon us
And looking out my window I saw that Winter had landed
Complete with the grey cloak and the bare tree sonnet,
A scroll of bark hanging down to the knees as he scanned it.
The gravel in the yard was pensive, annoyed to be crunched
As people with problems in their faces drove by in cars,
Yet I with such solemnity around me refused to be bunched,
In fact was inclined to give the go-by to bars.
Yes, there were things in that winter arrival that made me
Feel younger, less of a failure, it was actually earlier
Than many people thought; there were possibilities
For love, for South African adventure, for fathering a baby,
For taking oneself in hand, catching on without a scare me, or
Taking part in a world war, joining up at the start of hostilities.

Patrick Kavanagh, Come Dance with Kitty Stobling and Other Poems (1960).

                                                       Eliot Hodgkin
                        "A Pictorial Recipe For Your Plum Pudding" (1961)

The poem is in the 14-line quasi-sonnet form that Kavanagh often favored during his "Canal Bank" period.  I say "quasi-sonnet" because, to purists, he was not always precise in his meters and rhymes.  However, I am no purist, and I find his playful use of the form perfect for his mood at the time.

As to what it all "means," who knows?  For instance, I don't know quite what to make of the list of "possibilities" in the last four lines.  "Catching on without a scare me" may be an idiomatic expression that I am unaware of.  "Taking part in a world war, joining up at the start of hostilities" perhaps reflects the Cold War frights of the time (the poem was first published in a periodical in 1959).  I suppose the point may be that, in Kavanagh's euphoric, death-dodging state of mind, anything that comes his way bears the possibility of wonder and joy.  Something to bear in mind at this time of year (or at any time of year).

                                        Eliot Hodgkin, "Quinces" (1969)

Christmas, Part Two: "Earth Grown Old"

Christina Rossetti's best-known poem is usually sung or listened to, not read.  I suspect that many of those who sing or listen to the verses are not aware that they were written by Rossetti.  Here is the first stanza of the poem:

In the bleak mid-winter
   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.

Christina Rossetti, "A Christmas Carol," in Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1875 edition).  The lines "Snow had fallen, snow on snow,/Snow on snow" are particularly lovely, I think.

The poem was first published in a periodical in 1872.  Rossetti died in 1894.  In 1906, Gustav Holst set the poem to music.

                  Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935), "Mainstreet, Roros" (1904)

The line "Earth stood hard as iron" in the first stanza of "A Christmas Carol" seems to lead naturally to another seasonal poem by Rossetti.

                    Advent

Earth grown old, yet still so green,
          Deep beneath her crust of cold
Nurses fire unfelt, unseen:
          Earth grown old.

          We who live are quickly told:
Millions more lie hid between
          Inner swathings of her fold.

When will fire break up her screen?
          When will life burst thro' her mould?
Earth, earth, earth, thy cold is keen,
          Earth grown old.

Christina Rossetti, Verses (1893).

As I have mentioned on other occasions, a significant amount of Rossetti's poetry consists of devotional verse.  "Advent" falls within that category. Who are the "millions" who "lie hid between/Inner swathings of her fold"? I presume that they may be those who (to quote from another Rossetti poem) are "sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over."  Beyond that, I am not qualified to opine on the "meaning" of the poem.  Rossetti has a mystical strain that gives much of her religious verse a riddling quality. And one often senses that her non-theological world lies somewhere between the lines as well.

                             Harald Sohlberg, "A View of Vestfold" (1909)

Christmas, Part One: "We Are Folded All In A Green Fable"

My Christmas memories were formed in part by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.  During the Sixties, Goodyear annually issued a series of records (yes, 33 and 1/3 rpm records) titled The Great Songs of Christmas. The albums featured the best singers of the time, many of whom may be unknown to my younger readers:  Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, Doris Day, Sammy Davis, Jr., et cetera.  I remember my father buying the record at the tire store each year, about the time that the first snow fell.  We listened to the music as we decorated the tree.

Ah, the innocence!   

                              Stanley Cursiter, "Orkney Landscape" (1952)

     Christmas Poem

We are folded all
In a green fable
And we fare
From early
Plough-and-daffodil sun
Through a revel
Of wind-tossed oats and barley
Past sickle and flail
To harvest home,
The circles of bread and ale
At the long table.
It is told, the story --
We and earth and sun and corn are one.

Now kings and shepherds have come.
A wintered hovel
Hides a glory
Whiter than snowflake or silver or star.

George Mackay Brown, The Wreck of the Archangel (1989).

Except for brief periods, George Mackay Brown spent his entire life in Orkney.  His poetry and prose reflect both the agricultural life and the sea life of the islands.  As "Christmas Poem" suggests, the world of Orkney seems to be a timeless one, or, perhaps better, one that moves with the rhythm of Time.

                              Bet Low, "In the Hoy Hills (Orkney)" (1977)

R. S. Thomas On Christmas, Part Two

I have decided that R. S. Thomas's Christmas poetry deserves a second visit.  A side-note:  I find it interesting that most of his Christmas poems (at least the ones that I have been able to find) are in the two-stanza, eight-line form found in the following poems and in the three poems that appeared in my previous post.  It is probably merely a matter of coincidence, and may simply be a reflection of his laconic personality.

            Carol

What is Christmas without
snow?  We need it
as bread of a cold
climate, ermine to trim

our sins with, a brief
sleeve for charity's
scarecrow to wear its heart
on, bold as a robin.

R. S. Thomas, Later Poems (1983).

                       James Fletcher Watson, "Winter in Norfolk" (1956)

        Christmas Eve

Erect capital's arch;
decorate it with the gilt edge
of the moon.  Pave the way to it
with cheques and with credit --

it is still not high enough
for the child to pass under
who comes to us this midnight
invisible as radiation.

R. S. Thomas, No Truce with the Furies (1995).

                  William Ratcliffe, "Beehives in the Snow, Sweden" (1913)

          Nativity

The moon is born
and a child is born,
lying among white clothes
as the moon among clouds.

They both shine, but
the light from the one
is abroad in the universe
as among broken glass.

R. S. Thomas, Experimenting with an Amen (1986).

               Winifred Nicholson, "Rooks, Hyacinth and Snow" (c. 1935)

R. S. Thomas On Christmas

The word that comes to mind when I think of R. S. Thomas is fierce. However, having said that, I feel that I have fallen into the stereotypical view of Thomas as The World's Grumpiest Poet.  To wit, the man who was peremptory when not silent, living in an unheated stone cottage on the coast of Wales.   To my mind, this makes him, well, a human being.  And, of course, there's this:  his poetry is often graceful and beautiful.

Thomas's fierceness is reflected in his lifelong battle with God.  This battle consisted of Thomas stubbornly waiting upon God's equally stubborn silence, with Thomas commenting upon this state of affairs in his poems. The battle was made a great deal more piquant by the fact that Thomas served as an Anglican priest for 42 years, ministering to rural parishes in Wales (the subject of another of his love-hate relationships).

All of this leads to a seasonal note:  over the years, Thomas wrote a number of lovely Christmas poems.  How shall I describe the poems?  A bit fierce, yes, but withal lovely.  A selection follows.

                Song

I choose white, but with
Red on it, like the snow
In winter with its few
Holly berries and the one

Robin, that is a fire
To warm by and like Christ
Comes to us in his weakness,
But with a sharp song.

R. S. Thomas, H'm (1972).

                                        John Aldridge, "Winter" (1947)

                  Blind Noel

Christmas; the themes are exhausted.
Yet there is always room
on the heart for another
snowflake to reveal a pattern.

Love knocks with such frosted fingers.
I look out.  In the shadow
of so vast a God I shiver, unable
to detect the child for the whiteness.

R. S. Thomas, No Truce with the Furies (1995).

                                 John Nash, "The Garden in Winter" (1967)

                  Lost Christmas

He is alone, it is Christmas.
Up the hill go three trees, the three kings.
There is a star also
Over the dark manger.  But where is the Child?

Pity him.  He has come far
Like the trees, matching their patience
With his.  But the mind was before
Him on the long road.  The manger is empty.

R. S. Thomas, Young and Old (1972).

                                     Adrian Paul Allinson (1890-1959)
                         "Landscape with Trees, a Lake and a Village"