In the bleak midwinter.

Responding to a request from Scribner's Monthly for a Christmas poem, Christina Rosetti wrote "In The Bleak Midwinter" before 1872. It was not published, however, until 1904 in her Poetic Works and it first appeared in The English Hymnal in 1906 with a famous musical setting by Gustav Holst.

Here's the first verse:

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 ago.

Bleak for here in Starkville, but as I remember it pretty much an ordinary day in Cambridge, Mass. anytime between the middle of October and mid-March. The picture above mirrors one I took in November when leaves were changing and displayed here.





Yes, we are in a winter weather advisory with a chance for up 1/2" of freezing precipitation. At 3:15 pm, the icicles had started forming.