Midwinter

Audrey Assad sets Christina Rossetti's 1872 poem to music largely unchanged, opening with winter as a literal, physical fact before it becomes a metaphor: "in the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, the earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone."

"Enough for Him whom angels worship night and day, mother's milk to fill Him, in His bed of hay" sits the poem's central contrast in plain view — the one angels worship, fed and sheltered like any infant, the same descent Paul describes as becoming poor for the sake of others' riches.

"But what can I give Him, poor as I am? If I was a shepherd then I would bring a lamb, yes and if I was a wise man I would do my part, but all I have to give Him, I will give my heart" closes the poem the way it's closed for a century and a half — not with a bigger gift than the shepherds or magi brought, but with the one thing available regardless of means, the same principle behind the widow who gave everything she had rather than out of her abundance.