Last year at roughly this time, as astute Sun readers will recall, we featured “In the Bleak Midwinter,” by Christina Rossetti (1830–1894), to herald the coming of Christmas. As we noted with that Poem of the Day, Rossetti’s theological seriousness, as well as her gift for the craft of verse, elevates her religious poetry above the level of the simply pious. Her lines may go down with the sweet familiarity of holiday eggnog, but what accompanies them is more than a set of religious feelings. Though we may not realize it, we’re digesting not sentiments, but ideas. Like the best hymns, Rossetti’s Christmas poems offer us little theological treatises, effectively disguised as music. 

Today’s Poem of the Day, best known to church choirs in this mellifluous setting by John Rutter, is no exception. In three quatrains whose alternating trimeter-tetrameter meter reverses the standard hymn-meter form, “Love Came Down at Christmas” appears, at first glance, even simpler and more childlike than “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Its continual reiterations of the word “love” generate a kind of drowsy enchantment, as if the poem were only a sweet Christmas lullaby, written to rock babies and Christmas Eve congregations to sleep. In the entire poem, the only word of more than two syllables occurs in the second stanza. That word is incarnate — but as it turns out, that’s the key to everything here.

What acts on our ear as a lullaby is really a catechism on the nature of the Godhead. The poem’s three stanzas echo the form of the Trinity. The first stanza, with its suggestion of divine love’s self-giving, and with the angelic denizens of heaven who “gave the sign,” points to God the Father, the First Person of the Trinity. The second, naming the “Love Incarnate, Love Divine,” points to the second Person. The third, invoking love as “our token,” our “plea and gift and sign,” suggests the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, whose presence in human hearts is the outcome of the actions of the first two Persons.

The poem, in all its musical simplicity, rings with Saint John’s understanding of the good news of the Incarnation. The final stanza, particularly, seems to draw from the first Epistle of Saint John: Beloved, let us love one another, for everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. But if we are “born of God” and know God, it is because, as John writes at the opening of his Gospel, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” With utter childlikeness, Rossetti’s poem penetrates that mystery and makes it plain. 

Love Came Down at Christmas
by Christina Rossetti

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine,
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine,
Worship we our Jesus,
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.