17 pages • 34 minutes read
Robert SouthwellThe Burning Babe
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1595A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Child/Babe
The image of the “Babe” (Line 4) is at the center of the vision the speaker experiences in Southwell’s poem. The Babe is a supernaturally incongruous figure: Though “but newly born” (Line 7), he is able to converse with intelligence and pathos. The image is thus purposefully confounding. Southwell wants readers to see a small and vulnerable baby, the better to instill in them the horror of watching such a helpless being crying while lit on fire with their sins. At the same time, he wants to offer them the knowledge that this divine figure can offer those who practice its faith comfort, protection, and purification: The Babe isn’t just a baby, but represents the Son of God, whose birth as Jesus Christ on “Christmas day” (Line 16) marks his willingness to eventually die for mankind. The purity a newborn represents parallels the vision’s “faultless” (Line 9) desire to serve as a conduit for “Justice” and “Mercy” (Line 11) and to guide mankind “to their good” (Line 13).
Fire/Furnace
Heat and fire are what initially make the speaker aware of the vision before him. The Babe who appears to the speaker is “burning bright” (Line 4) and “scorched with excessive heat” (Line 5). “Flames” (Line 6) and “fiery heat” (Line 7) surround the visionary babe. Fire can be a destructive force. However, in “The Burning Babe” fire serves as a purifier, a means to render mankind “good” (Line 13). The burning babe explicitly equates fire with his “Love” (Line 10), the force which forges the “defiled souls” (Line 12) of men into something pure and new. The fire in the vision creates a “furnace” in which these souls are remade.
The use of fire as a purifying force is a trope throughout the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. For example, Isaiah 48:10 records God saying, “Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” Similarly, in Zechariah 13:9, God promises: “And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined.” Similarly, fire in Southwell’s poem is a means of re-creation despite the burning or suffering it causes.
Winter
The poem’s scene opens “in hoary winter’s” night with the speaker “shivering in the snow” (Line 1). The winter season calls to mind death and darkness. The cold and dark setting contrasts with the “sudden heat” and “glow” (Line 2) encompassing the burning babe. This frigid and forbidding wintry setting represents the cold, disconnected state of the human soul without God’s grace and salvation. It is only through the figure of Jesus Christ, here depicted in infant form, that a soul can be saved and receive eternal life, thus receiving the warmth it needs to survive the fatal winter. Christmas, the birthday of the Christ child, occurs during the winter. The season provides a foil to this representation of new life, of light, of warmth and comfort.
