Christmas Cards of Robert Frost - Article

Biography
"I can't help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas."

So ends the first of Robert Frost's Christmas "cards," chapbooks printed annually by Spiral Press from 1929 to 1962. Each year, Frost would select a poem, often writing an original piece for the occasion, and send it to his friends and loved ones—and his publisher's friends and loved ones. Now collectors' items, these annual cards started out simply as a way for Frost to honor the winter season with a poem.

As reported in the New York Times, Joseph Blumenthal, who headed Spiral Press from 1926 to 1971, had been working on a separate edition of Frost's poetry in 1929 when, without the poet's knowledge, he printed 250 copies—for his wife and a small group of colleagues—of a letterpress chapbook of Frost's early poem "Christmas Trees." When the poet saw the publication, his first response was to contact Blumenthal, requesting a few copies to send out to his own family members: "my sympathies have been enlisted on the side of small presses and hand setting. My heart will be with you in your work." The annual tradition was born.

All told, Blumenthal printed only 275 copies of the first greeting, though the last in the series—"The Prophets Really Prophesy as Mystics, the Commentators Merely by Statistics"—came out in an edition of 16,555 copies. Most years, the cards were limited to a small, intimate number.

Due to the poem's title, "Christmas Trees" could be mistaken for a simple poem, marked by clichéd holiday sentiment, but the poem begins: "The city had withdrawn into itself / And left at last the country to the country." This couplet, a remarkable and often recited bit of verse, resists the standard notions of holiday cheer. Here, the city condenses, drawing back like an old miser from (or into?) the celebration, paired with the country's satisfaction. There is a charged landscape, a precise meter, and a rigor to the rest of the work that does not limit the piece to a "holiday greeting."

In this way, "Christmas Trees" establishes Frost's series as both a charming holiday tradition and, with the help of Blumenthal, a collection of well-crafted works of art. That becomes more obvious when looking at the full collection, which features other classic poems by Frost, including "Birches," "A Boy's Will," and "The Wood-Pile" (pictured below).

Robert Frost's role in the popular American psyche might lead one to expect to find his name in any proper Christmas anthology. At the same time, his often-anthologized "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is not necessarily "cheery":

And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The final couplet is more haunting than typical seasonal verse. Perhaps that's what makes these cards so interesting. They are at once playful, serious, and printed in a limited letterpress edition that cuts past much of the gloss of Christmas.

In a way, they enact Frost's dictum, that "One who concerns himself with [the sound of sense] more than the subject is an artist."

A Christmas Carol - George Wither

So now is come our joyful feast,
Let every man be jolly;
Each room with ivy leaves is dressed,
And every post with holly.
Though some churls at our mirth repine,
Round your foreheads garlands twine,
Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,
And let us all be merry.

Now all our neighbors' chimnies smoke,
And Christmas blocks are burning;
Their ovens they with baked meats choke,
And all their spits are turning.
Without the door let sorrow lie,
And if for cold it hap to die,
We'll bury it in a Christmas pie,
And evermore be merry.

Now every lad is wondrous trim,
And no man minds his labor;
Our lasses have provided them
A bagpipe and a tabor.
Young men and maids, and girls and boys,
Give life to one another's joys;
And you anon shall by their noise
Perceive that they are merry.

Rank misers now do sparing shun,
Their hall of music soundeth;
And dogs thence with whole shoulders run,
So all things aboundeth.
The country-folk themselves advance,
For crowdy-mutton's come out of France;
And Jack shall pipe and Jill shall dance,
And all the town be merry.

Ned Swatch hath fetched his bands from pawn,
And all his best apparel;
Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn
With droppings of the barrel.
And those that hardly all the year
Had bread to eat or rags to wear,
Will have both clothes and dainty fare,
And all the day be merry.

Now poor men to the justices
With capons make their errands;
And if they hap to fail of these,
They plague them with their warrants.
But now they feed them with good cheer,
And what they want they take in beer,
For Christmas comes but once a year,
And then they shall be merry.

Good farmers in the country nurse
The poor, that else were undone;
Some landlords spend their money worse,
On lust and pride at London.
There the roisters they do play,
Drab and dice their land away,
Which may be ours another day;
And therefore let's be merry.

The client now his suit forbears,
The prisoner's heart is eased;
The debtor drinks away his cares,
And for the time is pleased.
Though others' purses be more fat,
Why should we pine or grieve at that;
Hang sorrow, care will kill a cat,
And therefore let's be merry.

Hark how the wags abroad do call
Each other forth to rambling;
Anon you'll see them in the hall,
For nuts and apples scrambling;
Hark how the roofs with laughters sound,
Anon they'll think the house goes round;
For they the cellar's depths have found,
And there they will be merry.

The wenches with their wassail-bowls
About the streets are singing;
The boys are come to catch the owls,
The wild mare in is bringing.
Our kitchen boy hath broke his box,
And to the dealing of the ox
Our honest neighbors come by flocks,
And here they will be merry.

Now kings and queens poor sheep-cotes have,
And mate with everybody;
The honest now may play the knave,
And wise men play at noddy.
Some youths will now a mumming go,
Some others play at rowland-hoe,
And twenty other gameboys moe;
Because they will be merry.

Then wherefore in these merry days
Should we, I pray, be duller?
No, let us sing some roundelays
To make our mirth the fuller.
And whilst we thus inspired sing,
Let all the streets with echoes ring;
Woods, and hills, and everything
Bear witness we are merry.

George Wither

Biography of George Wither 1588 - 1667 England

English poet and satirist, son of George Wither, of Hampshire, was born at Bentworth, near Alton, on the 11th of June 1588.
He was sent to Magdalen College, Oxford, at the age of fifteen, and remained at the university for two years. His neighbours appear to have had no great opinion of him, for they advised his father to put him to “some mechanic trade.” He was, however, sent to one of the Inns of Chancery, eventually obtaining an introduction at court.
He wrote an elegy (1612) on the death of Prince Henry, and a volume of gratulatory poems (1613) on the marriage of the princess Elizabeth, but his uncompromising character soon prepared trouble for him.
In 1611 he published Abuses Stript and Whipt, twenty satires of general application directed against Revenge, Ambition, Lust and other abstractions. The volume included a poem called “The Scourge,” in which the lord chancellor was attacked, and a series of epigrams. No copy of this edition is known, and it was perhaps suppressed, but in 1613 five editions appeared, and the author was lodged in the Marshalsea prison. The influence of the Princess Elizabeth, supported by a loyal “Satyre” to the king, in which he hints that an enemy at court had fitted personal meanings to his general invective, secured his release at the end of a few months. He had figured as one of the interlocutors, “ Roget,” in his friend William Browne’s Shepherd’s Pipe, with which were bound up eclogucs by other poets, among them one by Wither, and during his imprisonment he wrote what may be regarded as a continuation of Browne’s work, The Shepherd’s Hunting (printed I615), eclogues in which the two poets appear as “Willie “ and “Roget “ (in later editions “Philarete “). The fourth of these eclogues contains a famous passage in praise of poetry.
After his release he was admitted (1615) to Lincoln’s Inn, and in the same year he printed privately Fidelia, a love elegy, of which there is a unique copy in the Bodlleian. Other editions of this book, which contained the lyric “Shall I, wasting in despair,” appeared in 1617 and 1619. I
n 1621 he returned to the satiric vein with Wither’s Motto: Nec habeo, nec careo, nec curo. Over 30,000 copies of this poem were sold, according to his own account, within a few months. Like his earlier invective, it was said to be libellous, and Wither was again imprisoned, but shortly afterwards released without formal trial on the plea that the book had been. duly licensed.
In 1622 appeared his Faire- Virtue, The Mistresse of Phil’ Arete, a long panegyric of a mistress, partly real, partly allegorical, written chiefly in the seven-syllabled verse of which he was a master.

Wither began as a moderate in politics and religion, but from this time his Puritan leanings became more and more pronounced, and his later work consists of religious poetry, and of controversial and political tracts. His Hymnes and Songs of the Church (1622—1623) were issued under a patent of King James I. ordaining that they should be bound up with every copy of the authorized metrical psalms offered for sale (see HYMNS).
This patent was opposed, as inconsistent with their privilege to print the “singing-psalms,” by the Stationers’ Company, to Wither’s great mortification and loss, and a second similar patent was finally disallowed by the House of Lords.
Wither was in London during the plague of 1625, and in 1628 published Britain’s Remembrancer, a voluminous poem on the subject, interspersed with denunciations of the wickedness of the times, and prophecies of the disasters about to fall upon England. He also incidentally avenged Ben Jonson’s satire on him as the “ Chronomastix” of Time Vindicated, by a reference to Ben’s “drunken ‘conclave.” This book he was obliged to print with his own hand in consequence of his quarrel with the Stationers’ Company.
In 1635 he was employed by Henry Taunton, a London publisher, to write English verses illustrative of the allegorical plates of Crispin van Passe, originally designed for Gabriel Rollenhagen’s Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum (1610—1613). The book was published as a Collection of Embletnes, Ancient and Moderne, of which the only perfect copy known is in the British Museum.
The best of Wither’s religious poetry is contained in Heleluiah: or Britain’s Second Remembrancer, which was printed in Holland in 1641. Many of the poems rise to a high point of excellence.
Wither wrote, generally, in a pure nervous English idiom, and preferred the reputation of” rusticity “(an epithet applied to him even. by Baxter) to the tricks and artifices of poetical style which were then in favour. It may be partly on that account that he was better appreciated by posterity than by his contemporaries.
Wither had served as captain of horse in 1639 in the expedition of Charles I. against the Scottish Covenanters, and his religious rather than his political convictions must be accepted as the explanation of the fact that, three years after the Scottish expedition, at the outbreak of the Great Rebellion, he is found definitely siding with the parliament. He sold his estate to raise a troop of horse, and was placed by a parliamentary committee in command of Farnham Castle. After a few days’ occupation he left the place undefended, and marched to London.
His own house near Farnham was plundered, and he himself was captured by a troop of Royalist horse, owing his life to the intervention. of Sir John Denham on the ground that so long as Wither lived he himself could not be accounted the worst poet in England.
After this episode he was promoted to the rank of major. He was present at the siege of Gloucester (1643) and at Naseby (1645). He had been deprived in 1643 of his nominal command, and of his commission as justice of the peace, in consequence of an attack upon Sir Richard Onslow, who was, he maintained, responsible for the Farnham disaster.
In the same year parliament made him a grant of £2000 for the loss of his property, but he apparently never received the full amount, and complained from time to time of his embarrassments and of the slight rewards he received for his services.
An order was made to settle a yearly income of £150 on Wither, chargeable on Sir John Denham’s sequestrated estate, but there is no evidence that he ever received it. A small place given him by the Protector was forfeited “by declaring unto him (Cromwell) those truths which he was not willing to hear of.” At the Restoration he was arrested, and remained in prison for three years. He died in London on the 2nd of May 1667.

Christmas Trees - Robert Frost

A Christmas Circular Letter


The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn't thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I'd hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I'd hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, "There aren't enough to be worth while."

"I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over."

"You could look.
But don't expect I'm going to let you have them."
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded "Yes" to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer's moderation, "That would do."
I thought so too, but wasn't there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north.

He said, "A thousand."

"A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?"

He felt some need of softening that to me:
"A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars."

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn't know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn't lay one in a letter.
I can't help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

Robert Frost