Raw JSON
{
"cleanup_version": "v1",
"cleanup_mode": "rule_based",
"source_file": "story.json",
"source_sha256": "754626c641e8ab7d4a35fffbc615dfb0a1e9b870a6ab9fa6276b4398e6bdf617",
"source_title": "The Burning Babe",
"tts_title": "The Burning Babe",
"kind": "story",
"canonical_url": "https://ririro.com/poems/the-burning-babe/",
"slug": "the-burning-babe",
"story_dirname": "poems--the-burning-babe",
"section_slug": "poems",
"title": "The Burning Babe",
"author": "Robert Southwell SJ",
"publisher_label": "Ririro",
"source_version": "unknown",
"content_type": "poem",
"language": "en",
"summary": "\"The Burning Babe\" is a short devotional poem in which a shivering speaker, standing alone in a winter's night, suddenly witnesses a vision of a radiant, weeping infant blazing in the air. The child speaks of his own breast as a furnace, fuelled by Justice, fanned by Mercy, burning with love for humanity's corrupted souls. The poem builds an intense, almost paradoxical image — flames fed by tears, a bath of blood — before the vision vanishes and the speaker realises it is Christmas Day.",
"clean_summary": "\"The Burning Babe\" is a short devotional poem in which a shivering speaker, standing alone in a winter's night, suddenly witnesses a vision of a radiant, weeping infant blazing in the air. The child speaks of his own breast as a furnace, fuelled by Justice, fanned by Mercy, burning with love for humanity's corrupted souls. The poem builds an intense, almost paradoxical image - flames fed by tears, a bath of blood - before the vision vanishes and the speaker realises it is Christmas Day.",
"body": [
"As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow, Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear; Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed. “Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I! My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls, For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.” With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.",
"Robert Southwell SJ was a late sixteenth-century English Jesuit priest and poet who wrote much of his verse while living as an outlawed Catholic missionary in Protestant England. Executed in 1595, he was later canonised as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. \"The Burning Babe\" was reportedly praised by Ben Jonson, who said he would have been willing to destroy many of his own works to have written it."
],
"body_text": "As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow, Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear; Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed. “Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I! My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls, For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.” With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.\n\nRobert Southwell SJ was a late sixteenth-century English Jesuit priest and poet who wrote much of his verse while living as an outlawed Catholic missionary in Protestant England. Executed in 1595, he was later canonised as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. \"The Burning Babe\" was reportedly praised by Ben Jonson, who said he would have been willing to destroy many of his own works to have written it.",
"clean_body": [
"As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow, Surpris'd I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear; Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed. \"Alas!\" quoth he, \"but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I! My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls, For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.\" With this he vanish'd out of sight and swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day."
],
"clean_text": "As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow, Surpris'd I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear; Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed. \"Alas!\" quoth he, \"but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I! My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls, For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.\" With this he vanish'd out of sight and swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.",
"tts_chunks": [
"As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow, Surpris'd I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear; Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed. \"Alas!\" quoth he, \"but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!",
"My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls, For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.\" With this he vanish'd out of sight and swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day."
],
"theme_slugs": [],
"listing_memberships": [
{
"type": "collection",
"slug": "poems",
"title": "Poems",
"url": "https://ririro.com/poems/"
},
{
"type": "author",
"slug": "robert-southwell-sj",
"title": "Robert Southwell SJ",
"url": "https://ririro.com/author/robert-southwell-sj/"
}
],
"reading_meta": {
"reading_level": null,
"age_band": null,
"read_time": null
},
"media": {
"has_audio": true,
"has_pdf": true,
"has_images": true
},
"asset_refs": {
"pdf_urls": [
"https://ririro.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/The-Burning-Babe_compressed.pdf"
],
"audio_urls": [
"https://widget.spreaker.com/player/?episode_id=66810862&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true"
],
"image_urls": [
"https://ririro.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/the-burning-babe.webp"
]
},
"breadcrumbs": [
"The Burning Babe"
],
"scraped_at": "2026-05-07T12:39:19+00:00",
"removed_paragraphs": [
{
"index": 1,
"reason": "remove_editorial_appendix",
"text": "Robert Southwell SJ was a late sixteenth-century English Jesuit priest and poet who wrote much of his verse while living as an outlawed Catholic missionary in Protestant England. Executed in 1595, he was later canonised as one of the Forty "
}
],
"rules_applied": [
"normalize_punctuation",
"split_long_paragraph",
"remove_editorial_appendix"
],
"stats": {
"original_paragraph_count": 2,
"clean_paragraph_count": 1,
"removed_paragraph_count": 1,
"tts_chunk_count": 2
}
}