The Burning Babe (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Robert Southwell
- First Published: 1595
- Type of Work: Lyric/narrative
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Religion, God, Christianity, Jesus Christ, Fire, Christmas
The Poem
“The Burning Babe,” by Robert Southwell, is one of the most famous and powerful Christmas poems in the English language. Written in carefully crafted rhyming couplets of iambic heptameter, the poem is sixteen lines long, and each of its long lines is skillfully broken by a caesura (pause), which occurs after the first four feet and before the last three. Yet, despite its structural complication, “The Burning Babe” relates its astonishing, mystical occurrences in a smoothly flowing narrative.
In the first four lines of the poem, a cold and isolated...
[The entire page is 1407 words long]
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