The "ingression" of love? The "abiding crag" is "on" forgiveness?? Did Auden even think about this when he wrote it? What a shabby effort!
"Little silent Christmas tree/ you are so little/ you are more like a flower/...were you very sorry to come away?" Ugh! It (above) sounds like the something the big, dumb, dog in the Screwy Squirrel cartoon would have said! E.E. Cummings wrote this turkey!
This one (above) is slightly better than the others, maybe because Eliot was a believing Christian, but it has some pretty clunky parts. What is this about the the camels being "galled, sore-footed and refractory?" Why the academic language? The idea of poetry as a celebration of common feeling is lost here.
Modern Christmas poems are often downright depressing. No "Jingle Bells" or "Deck the Halls" for us. Here's part of one by James Dickey. It makes me want to commit suicide. Modern poets are a sad lot, maybe that's why I seldom read them.
Older Christmas poems, especially the ones that double as song lyrics, are much more to my liking: "Away in a manger, no crib for a bed/ the Little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head." Why can't our poets write something simple and elegant like that? Imagine if Auden had written "Away in a Manger:" "Stuck here in an ingressing manger/ The man-god thrust his head on the abiding crag."
It must really gall modern poets that the most popular Christmas poem is still the happy one written by Clement Moore 140 years ago:
Twas the night before Christmas,
And all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring,
Not even a mouse."
The mouse is not "galled, sore-footed and refractory." He's just a mouse.
By the way, while I was looking for a picture to illustrate this post I stumbled on this (below) picture of the Nativity by Rubens. Here's a detail...
The mouse is not "galled, sore-footed and refractory." He's just a mouse.
By the way, while I was looking for a picture to illustrate this post I stumbled on this (below) picture of the Nativity by Rubens. Here's a detail...