Love Came Down at Christmas

By Christina Rossetti

“Love Came Down at Christmas” is a short Christmas poem by Christina Rossetti, first printed without a title in her devotional book Time Flies: A Reading Diary (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1885) as the entry for December 29. She revised it for Verses (1893), where it is titled “Christmastide.” Its three quatrains, just 12 lines and 63 words, have become one of the best-loved carols in English hymnals.

Our reading is that the poem is built around one word, “sign,” which closes every stanza. In the first stanza, heaven gives the sign: a star and a choir of angels. In the second, the worshipper asks what sign we could give back. In the third, the answer is love itself, so the gift that came down at Christmas is the same thing people are asked to return.

ON THIS PAGE
Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

The first stanza announces the Christmas story in four lines. Love, meaning God, came down to earth and was born, and the star and the angels announced it.

The second stanza turns to worship. The singers praise the Godhead and Jesus as “Love Incarnate,” then ask a question: what sign could they offer in return?

The third stanza answers. Love will be their token, shared between “yours” and “mine,” given to God and to everyone else. The last line names love as a prayer, a gift, and a sign all at once.

The Poem

The text below follows “Christmastide” in Rossetti’s Verses, as printed in the 1894 New York edition (E. & J. B. Young) of the 1893 SPCK volume and transcribed by Project Gutenberg (eBook #77809). This is the version Rossetti revised and the one most hymnals print.

The first version, in Time Flies (1885), differs mainly in its last line, which there reads “Love the universal sign.” Line numbers on this page count the 12 lines of verse, not the stanza breaks.

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

Background

Christina Georgina Rossetti was born in London on December 5, 1830, the youngest child of the Italian exile and scholar Gabriele Rossetti. Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and her first major book, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), made her name.

She was a devout Anglican, shaped by the High Church revival of the Oxford Movement, and religious poetry runs through her whole career. In her later years, much of her writing went into devotional books published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK).

Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1885) is one of these. It gives a short reflection, an anecdote, or a poem for each day of the year. “Love came down at Christmas” appears untitled under December 29, in the days after Christmas, following an entry on the Holy Innocents.

In 1893, the SPCK gathered the poems from three of these prose books, Called to Be Saints, Time Flies, and The Face of the Deep, into a single volume called Verses. There the poem received its title, “Christmastide,” and a new last line.

Rossetti died in London on December 29, 1894, by coincidence the same date to which she had assigned the poem in Time Flies. Her other Christmas poem now sung as a carol, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” had appeared in 1872 as “A Christmas Carol.”

The poem became a hymn in the 20th century. The Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (1919) set it to an Irish traditional melody, named Gartan for Lough Gartan in County Donegal. For Songs of Praise (1925), Reginald Owen Morris wrote the tune Hermitage, still the usual tune in many English churches.

Analysis and Themes

The poem is so short and so simple that it is easy to sing without noticing how carefully it is built. Most of its meaning comes from repetition, from a single question, and from Rossetti’s revision of one line.

A Poem Made of One Word

“Love” appears 11 times in 12 lines, and it begins eight of them. Rossetti capitalizes it when it means God (“Love Divine,” “Love Incarnate”) and lets it fall to lower case in line 10, “love be mine,” where it becomes human affection.

The shift is the point. The same word names God in the first stanza and what people give each other in the third, which suggests that the two are not really different things. The idea echoes the First Letter of John: “God is love.”

The Question in the Middle

The second stanza starts as praise and ends with the poem’s only question: “But wherewith for sacred sign?” The old word “wherewith” means “with what,” and the question is a practical one. If God gave a star and angels, what can ordinary worshippers offer?

The question recalls the Magi, who answered it with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Rossetti’s answer costs nothing and is open to everyone, which may be why it suits a congregation better than a gift of treasure would.

Love as a Token

“Love shall be our token” turns love into a badge, something that marks out the people who carry it. The line echoes Jesus in John’s Gospel: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

Line 11, “Love to God and all men,” sums up the two great commandments, to love God and to love one’s neighbor. In four short lines, the third stanza moves from a private exchange between “yours” and “mine” to the whole human race.

The Revised Last Line

In 1885, the poem ended “Love the universal sign,” a line that states an idea. In 1893, Rossetti changed it to “Love for plea and gift and sign,” which gives love three jobs: a plea, or prayer, to God; a gift, like the gifts of the Magi; and a sign, like the star.

The revision ties the ending back to the rest of the poem. The final “sign” now answers the angels’ sign in line 4 and the question in line 8, and the three nouns slow the last line down, the way a hymn slows for its close.

Form and Technique

The poem has three quatrains in a trochaic meter, with stresses falling on odd-numbered syllables: “LOVE came DOWN at CHRIST-mas.” Odd lines have six syllables and end on an unstressed beat. Even lines have seven and end on a stress, which gives each pair of lines a falling-then-landing motion.

Hymnals list this pattern as 6.7.6.7. It is unusual enough that few familiar tunes fit it, which is one reason new tunes were found or written for the poem.

Only the even lines rhyme, and they all rhyme on one sound: “Divine,” “sign,” “Divine,” “sign,” “mine,” “sign.” With “sign” ending every stanza and “Divine” used twice, the poem works almost like a chant with a refrain.

Rossetti relies on repetition and parallel phrasing rather than imagery. Lines 1 and 3 mirror each other (“Love came down,” “Love was born”), as do lines 5 and 7 (“Worship we the Godhead,” “Worship we our Jesus”). The inverted “Worship we” is old hymn diction, a call to the congregation rather than a statement about it.

The only concrete images are the “Star and Angels” of line 4. Everything else is abstract, which keeps the poem short enough to memorize and open enough for anyone to sing.

Notable Lines

Three moments carry most of the poem’s weight.

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine;

Lines 1 to 2

The opening compresses the doctrine of the Incarnation into a single verb, “came down.” Line 2 piles up the word “Love” three times, in “Love,” “lovely,” and “Love,” as if one word were not enough.

Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Lines 7 to 8

The turn from praise to question is the hinge of the poem. The colon after “Jesus” stops the line short before the doubt arrives.

Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

Lines 11 to 12

The close widens the poem to everyone and then gathers it up in three nouns. “Sign” as the final word answers the star and angels of the first stanza.

Themes

Four ideas run through these twelve lines.

Divine Love

The poem identifies God with love from its first line, calling Christ “Love Divine” and “Love Incarnate.” Christmas, in this view, is the moment love itself took a body.

Incarnation

“Came down” and “was born” describe God entering the world as a human child. The poem never mentions the stable or the manger, only the fact of the descent.

Worship and Response

The middle stanza asks what humans can give in return, and the poem treats worship as a response to a gift rather than a duty.

Shared Love

The last stanza turns love outward, from God to “yours” and “mine” and finally to “all men.” Christmas becomes a pattern for how people treat each other.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “Love Came Down at Christmas.”

Who Wrote “Love Came Down at Christmas”?

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894), the Victorian poet best known for Goblin Market and for the carol “In the Bleak Midwinter.” She first published the poem, untitled, in her devotional book Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1885), and she revised it for Verses (1893), where it is called “Christmastide.”

What Is the Meaning of “Love Came Down at Christmas”?

The poem says that God, who is love, came to earth at Christmas in the birth of Jesus. It then asks how people can respond, and answers that love itself should be their sign: love for God, for one another, and for everyone. The gift and the response turn out to be the same thing.

Is “Love Came Down at Christmas” a Hymn or a Poem?

Both. Rossetti wrote it as a poem for a devotional book, not for singing, but its short lines and regular meter made it easy to set to music. Since the early 20th century, it has appeared in many hymnals, often to the Irish tune Gartan or to Hermitage by Reginald Owen Morris.

What Is the Original Last Line of “Love Came Down at Christmas”?

In Time Flies (1885), the last line reads “Love the universal sign.” Rossetti changed it to “Love for plea and gift and sign” when the poem was reprinted in Verses (1893), and most hymnals today use the revised line.

What Does “Wherewith for Sacred Sign” Mean?

“Wherewith” is an old word for “with what.” The line asks what sacred sign worshippers could offer in return for the sign God gave at Christmas, the star and the angels. The poem’s final stanza answers that their sign should be love.

Glossary

A few words in the poem are old-fashioned or carry a religious meaning.

• Divine (line 2): Belonging to God, or God himself; here a name for Christ.
• sign (line 4): A signal or portent; here the star seen by the Magi and the angels who appeared to the shepherds.
• Godhead (line 5): The divine nature of God; God considered as God.
• Incarnate (line 6): Made flesh; having taken on a human body.
• wherewith (line 8): With what; by what means.
• token (line 9): A badge or outward mark that shows who someone is or what they belong to.
• plea (line 12): An earnest request; here a prayer offered to God.

In Popular Culture

The poem is better known as a carol than as a poem. Besides the hymn tunes Gartan and Hermitage, it has been set by composers including Harold Darke, Leo Sowerby, and John Rutter, whose setting Oxford University Press published in 1971.

The American band Jars of Clay recorded a version on their 2007 album Christmas Songs, and the American composer Jennifer Higdon has set the text for choir, soprano, and harp.

Related Poems

If “Love Came Down at Christmas” speaks to you, these poems share its season or its devotion.

• In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti: Rossetti’s other Christmas carol, which ends with the same question of what a poor worshipper can give.
• On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity by John Milton: A grand Nativity ode in which, like Rossetti’s poem, heaven comes down to earth.
• The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell: An Elizabethan Christmas vision in which the Christ child is consumed by the fire of love.
• The Oxen by Thomas Hardy: A Christmas Eve poem that longs for the simple faith Rossetti’s carol takes for granted.
• I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: A Victorian Christmas poem that, like Rossetti’s, turns the Nativity toward love and peace among people.