Geerhardus Vos’s “Winter’s Death”: A Commentary

Winter’s Death[1] by Geerhardus Vos

Here lies the Winter hated,
Goliath-like prostrated,
Whom David’s stone laid low.
Recovered from earth’s chillness,
Spring uses the first stillness
To put left-over illness
Beneath the thin-grown snow.

His efforts at retrieving
Lost ground were past believing;
How hard the giant died!
He drew on hidden power,
Stored from his manhood’s dower,
Fighting till the last hour;
It was a glorious fight!

In somber indoor musing
Methought I might be using
His stay to close mine own;
Take leave of life’s embraces,
All its delights and graces,
To seek the nameless places,
Where North nor South is known.

Misfortune had been taking
My precious things and making
Them break like brittle glass.
I felt upon me creeping
Forebodings of death’s reaping,
Of that blind dreamless sleeping,
That no possession has.

O Spring, thou wondrous daring,
To cause without preparing
Me strangest things befall!
Like one who, just returning
From burial rites or burning,
Finds friends busy adorning
For him the banquet hall.

Where ever was recorded
Such sudden change afforded
By turn in fortune’s wheels?
Long ice-clogged streams set flowing,
Warm fragrant Southwinds blowing,
Through willows green mists showing,
The old, old, strange appeal!

Stream in light-world revealers,
Life-wakers and life-healers,
When flesh from soul would slip!
The feast but just commences;
This needs more than five senses,
The host so much dispenses
For eye and ear and lip.

And be it the last station
Of joy, on whose elation
Follows the endless rest,
Though Autumn weep discouraged,
Seeing withered all that flourished,
Yet shall new years be nourished
From the eternal breast.

Vos’s poem “Winter’s Death” brings the story of the seasons to a truly satisfying resolution. The story left off with autumn bravely embracing winter’s silencing sickle, yet not without hope. The life born in the miracle of spring, having reached its full intensity in summer, must now prove its hidden, otherworldly strength against this Goliath-like foe. As in the biblical story, this final poem becomes a poem of eucatastrophe—a sudden and unexpected turn (catastrophe) toward the good (eu).[2]

What expectations accompany the title “Winter’s Death” (Mors Hyemis)? The preceding poem concluded with winter terrible and triumphant. Having wielded his “great sickle,” he reigned over “the bare-shorn land.” It is natural, then, to assume that “Winter’s Death” will dwell on the deadly power that winter itself wields. Indeed, this reality pressed heavily upon the poet himself as he recounts in stanzas 3–4.[3]

Yet the title bears a deeper, more surprising meaning—one we greet with a smile at the poem’s opening:

Here lies the Winter hated,
Goliath-like prostrated,
Whom David’s stone laid low.

The original Dutch is even more direct:

De winter is gestorven (The winter has died)
Als Goliath verdorven (Like Goliath, ruined)
Die ’t lei voor David af (Who yielded before David).⁴

The poem, then, is not ultimately about winter’s deadly sting, but about the death of winter itself—the death of death. This is good news! Winter shares not only in Goliath’s apparent invincibility, but also in his shocking fall before apparent weakness. For, like David, the life born in spring possesses a hidden strength drawn from beyond itself—a life winter could not finally defeat.

This hidden strength had already been sensed in “Miracle of Spring,” the first of the seasonal poems:[5]

O Soul, so sharply sensing, Eternal Spring so near.[6]

What was intimated in spring is now more fully unveiled with winter’s death:

Though Autumn weep discouraged,
Seeing withered all that flourished,
Yet shall new years be nourished
From the eternal breast.

The original Dutch reads

Schoon zang en bloei vervlogen (Though song and bloom fade),
Herfst beeft, den dood voor oogen (Autumn shivers, death before her eyes),
Het jaar heft toch gezogen (Nevertheless, the year rises, having drawn [nourishment])
De borst der eeuwigheid (From the bosom of eternity).

We will return to these lines shortly. But first, a brief overview of Vos’s poem.

The poem unfolds in eight stanzas, advancing in couplets, with each pair moving the narrative forward. Each stanza is comprised of seven lines—the first three lines form one sentence and the final four form a second. This holds for all but the final stanza, which is one long sentence. The final line of each sentence rhymes: AABCCCB. The number eight may reflect the biblical idea of new creation and the number seven of perfection.

The opening two stanzas proclaim the wonderful eucatastrophe of spring. Like David, spring in her youthfulness defeats the rippling giant winter in an utterly unexpected way. The shepherd boy prevailed over the giant with no sword in his hand (1 Sam. 17:50). So, spring does not meet winter’s sickle with her own but “uses the first stillness / to put left-over illness / beneath the thin-grown snow” (stanza 1).

The next two stanzas flash back to winter’s cold, loveless reign, when he mercilessly worked death around and within the poet, stripping him of all that he held dear. He was falling headlong into “nameless places” (stanza 3) of “blind dreamless sleeping” (stanza 4).

But then comes the sudden turn toward the good—the eucatastrophe! In the following two stanzas, the poet, standing on the brink of despair, is pulled back in an instant.

O Spring, thou wondrous daring,
To cause without preparing
Me strangest things befall! (stanza 5, emphasis mine)

He is suddenly, miraculously rich like a bridegroom: alive and overflowing with every desire, excitement, and delight. He experiences a kind of new birth as the scent of lilac and the songs of the birds again fill the soft air. Life has returned, as it were, from the grave—and it has returned full of joy! The once-cold world is now warmed by an abundance of pleasures freely and so richly given.

In the final two stanzas, the poet longs to take in all the pleasures of life. Yet he knows that even his five senses are far too inadequate to receive the fullness of life before him on a platter. Moreover, the eucatastrophe of the new birth has transformed his perspective: The song and bloom that once seemed fleeting with winter’s inevitable arrival were not enjoyed in vain. The song was a rehearsal for eternity, and the bloom a token of the greater beauty that awaited him. They belonged not merely to a passing moment, but to the rich and full eternity from which the year itself draws its life. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).

Eucatastrophic Eschatology

The poem’s conclusion reveals how the seasons point beyond themselves, bringing us to Vos’s deepest insight in his seasonal poetry of true religion and eschatology. Time must not to be confused with eternity, nor eternity with time. Rather, time rests upon eternity and derives its meaning from it—on this, our hope is found. Time, as it unfolds according to the comprehensive plan of God, reflects—creaturely and analogically—the glory of the eternal, self-contained triune God. For Vos, there is a Creator-creature distinction and a Creator-creature relation, in which the creature exists to mirror the Creator’s glory, and the seasons are no exception.

Why, then, might God have ordered the year so that the harshest season is displaced by the most delicate? Why does spring exercise a seemingly hidden power to defy the mighty winter? Why does winter’s death creep slowly across the land, while spring’s new life bursts forth almost overnight? The reason is because God designed the seasons to declare the creation’s hope and ours: the eschatological hope of the resurrection of the dead (Rom. 8:19–23) and of “the new world” to come (Matt. 19:28). The transition from the present world to the new world, from this age to the age to come, will be like the arrival of spring—a sudden turn toward the good when Christ comes again. And like spring, it will point unmistakably beyond itself to the power of the living God who raises the dead.

Vos’s eschatology is eucatastrophically calibrated, in tune with Scripture, first of all, but also with spring. Death did not die gradually. Christ did not rise by degrees. His deepest humiliation turned in an instant when he took his first glorified breath. In that moment, death died and the “Eternal Spring” of the new creation dawned.

The Good Shepherd and the Eternal Spring

We who share in Christ’s death and resurrection, therefore, must walk by faith and not by sight. For in weakness, we are strong. In dying, we live. And we await the eucatastrophe of the resurrection of the dead when our risen and ascended Lord returns. Until then, “we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:7–10).

Finally, think of what Vos says in his sermon “Rabboni!” based on John 20:16. He draws us into the eucatastrophe at our Lord’s tomb in the garden: Our text takes us to the tomb of the risen Lord, on the first Sabbath-morning of the New Covenant. It is impossible for us to imagine a spot more radiant with light and joy than was this immediately after the resurrection. Even when thinking ourselves back into the preceding moments, while as yet to the external eye there was nothing but the darkness of death, our anticipation of what we know to be about to happen floods the scene with a twilight of supernatural splendor. The sepulchre itself has become to us prophetic of victory; we seem to hear in the expectant air the wingbeat of the descending angels, come to roll away the stone and announce to us: “The Lord is risen indeed!” Besides this, we have learned to read the story of our Lord’s life and death so as to consider the resurrection its only possible outcome, and this has to some extent dulled our sense for the startling character of what took place. We interpret the resurrection in terms of the atoning cross, and easily forget how little the disciples were as yet prepared for doing the same. And so it requires an effort on our part to understand sympathetically the state of mind they brought to the morning of this day. . . . The circumstance shows that there is need of a deeper faith than that of mere acquaintance with and consent to external statements of truth, when the dread realities of life and death assail us. Dare we say that we ourselves should have proved stronger in such a trial, if over against all that mocked our hope we had been able to place no more than a dimly remembered promise? Let us thank God that, when we ourselves enter into the valley of the shadow of death, we have infinitely more than a promise to stay our hearts upon, that ours is the fulfilment of the promise, the fact of the resurrection, nay the risen Lord Himself present with rod and staff beside us.

The resurrection of Christ is the true eucatastrophe at the heart of God’s wonderful story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. As we await the consummation, dread realities may inflict us, as they did for Vos (stanzas 3–4), but we have not only the promise but, more importantly, living fellowship with the good shepherd. He is with us always. And he will certainly lead us into the pastures of the “Eternal Spring” that he has opened for us.

So, in Christ by faith we already revel in winter’s death.

Footnotes

[1] This translation was self-published by Geerhardus Vos in Charis: English Verse (Geerhardus Vos, 1931), 18–20. The original Dutch version was published in Spiegel der Natuur en Lyrica Anglica (Geerhardus Vos, 1912), 64–65.

[2] This term was coined by J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay “On Fairy-stories.” He writes, “The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy . . . is not essentially ‘escapist’, nor ‘fugitive’. . . . [I]t is a sudden and miraculous grace. . . . It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories” in Tolkien on Fairy-stories, eds. Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson (Harper Collins, 2014), 75.

[3] Geerhardus Vos, “Autumn,” trans. Daniel Ragusa: https://reformedforum.org/geerhardus-voss-autumn-a-translation-and-commentary/.

[4] My translation in parentheses.

[5] Geerhardus Vos, “Miracle of Spring,” trans. Daniel Ragusa: https://reformedforum.org/geerhardus-voss-miracle-of-spring-a-translation-and-commentary/

[6] My translation in parentheses.

[7] Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory: Sermons Preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary (The Reformed Press, 1922), 89–90.