Wynter Wakeneth Al My Care
By Elizabeth Prata
‘Wynter wakeneth al my care’ is one of the earliest surviving winter poems in English literature. Its language is Middle English of the 1300s.
It’s a poem about the brevity of life – a memento mori – which is a poem or trope reminding one about the inevitability of death. It is designed to remind one about that inevitability to come upon everyone, and to reflect on what happens after death.
We don’t so much reflect on these things in current days, nor do preachers preach much on it. I remember Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God which was ALL about death and our eternal destination, reaping the rewards of sin, therefore repent. Not a common subject today.
Perhaps because death is so removed from us moderns, we are not as familiar with the Grim Reaper anymore personally. The body is taken to a funeral home, sequestered in Intensive Care Units, it isn’t prevalent in every day life as it would have been for the ancients who saw death all the time. Even warfare is partly done by bombs and missiles from afar, unlike hand to hand combat in former times, killing by one’s own sword or bayonet.
Here is the original poem:
Wynter wakeneth al my care;
Nou this leves waxeth bare.
Ofte Y sike ant mourne sare
When hit cometh in my thoht
Of this worldes joie:
Hou hit geth al to noht!
Nou hit is, ant nou hit nys,
Also hit ner nere, ywys!
That moni mon seith, soth hit ys:
Al goth bote Godes wille;
Alle we shule deye,
Thath us like ylle.
Al that gren me graveth grene;
Nou hit faleweth al bydene.
Jesu, help that hit be sene,
Ant shild us from helle,
For Y not whider Y shal,
Ne hou longe her duelle.
Here is the translated poem:
Winter awakens all my sorrow;
Now these leaves grow barren.
Often I sigh and sadly mourn
When it enters into my thought
Regarding this world’s joy:
How it goes all to nought!
Now it is, and now it isn’t,
As if it had never been, indeed!
What many a man says, true it is:
All passes except God’s will;
We all shall die,
Though we dislike it.
All that seed men bury unripe;
Now it withers all at once.
Jesus, help that this be known,
And shield us from hell,
For I know not whither I’ll go,
Nor how long here dwell.
“What impressed the writer was the tragic change that comes over the appearance of the woods and the meadows. The whole point of his song is that he actually sees, as did Shakespeare, hideous winter confounding the beauty of summer-stripping the branches and turning the green into the sere and yellow leaf. That sight-the death of the season-plunges him into melancholy, for he knows that life itself is as brief as summer and that for man death is as unescapable as winter.” Source, article “Wynter Wakeneth Al My Care”, by Edward Bliss Reed
Modern Language Notes, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Feb., 1928).
The Lord’s Day is a good day to reflect on death, which to the Christian is still a sad subject but one that is laced with HOPE. We know our eternal destination post bodily death is eternal life. Jesus the Savior gives life to those who repent, and we will live forever with Him! A subject that has joy behind it because of the promise of reunion, happiness, and life triumphant in glory.
After winter, comes the spring.
