Bulletin Column: A Child of the Snows

Just as a joke can cease being funny if someone has to explain it, so too can some of the deepest mysteries of our faith begin to lose their profundity when we spend too many words trying to elaborate on them. There is room for the theological explanation, but sometimes, other literary genres are more fitting. As we stand on the threshold of Christmas, poetry and verse seems to be an appropriate way to dwell on the mystery. It is this kind of musing that G.K. Chesterton undertook in his poem, “A Child of the Snows”:

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.