Welcome Midwinter ~ three poems for Solstice
A sharing for Old Advent
Dark of the moon and the longest night.
The deepest dark is here. Long live the light!
Today, for our continuing Old Advent, I am sharing my favourite Winter Solstice poems as we await the newborn sun. I wish for us all a blessed and meaningful Midwinter's Day and a very happy Yule.
The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper
And so the shortest day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule.
Maeshow: Midwinter by George MacKay Brown
Equinox to Hallowmas, darkness
falls like the leaves. The
tree of the sun is stark.
On the loom of winter, shadows
gather in a web; then the
shuttle of St Lucy makes a
pause; a dark weave
fills the loom.
The blackness is solid as a
stone that locks a tomb.
No star shines there.
Then begins the true ceremony of
the sun, when the one
last fleeting solstice flame
is caught up by a
midnight candle.
Children sing under a street
lamp, their voices like
leaves of light.
Approaching Solstice by Patricia Monaghan
Yes, friends, the darkness wins but these
short days so celebrate light:
today, the lemon sunrise lasted a few
hours until sunset, all day the snow
glowed pink and purple in the trees.
This is not a time of black and white.
My friend, outside us, among us too,
let's sing what winter forces us to know:
Joy and colour bloom despite the night.
We measure warmth by love, not by degrees.
I love this line in the last poem: We measure warmth by love, not by degrees.
Their voices like leaves of light