Nobody in this song is having a comfortable time. The milk arrives frozen in its pail, the shepherd blows on his fingers to warm them, the roads are foul, and the parson's sermon is lost in a fit of coughing. Yet the whole thing is called "merry." That tension is the heart of the poem. Winter is hard, and the people in it are cold, red-nosed and a bit grubby, but they get through it by sticking together, keeping the fire going and noticing the funny side. The central idea is that warmth is something a household makes for itself, and that it feels sweeter against the cold.
The construction is clever. Each stanza is really one long sentence, held in suspense by a run of "When" clauses: icicles hang, Dick blows his nail, Tom carries logs, the milk freezes. The grammar waits until the sixth line to deliver its main clause: "Then nightly sings the staring owl." The effect resembles a pile of small discomforts being added up, one on top of another, until the owl's cry finally breaks the chain. The rhyme scheme helps. The opening lines alternate their rhymes (wall/nail/hall/pail), then tighten into the couplet foul/owl. In the second stanza "bowl" and "owl" are a slant rhyme to modern ears, but the sounds still seem to hoot across the lines. Then comes the refrain, which breaks the pattern. "To-whit! / To-who!" is chopped into two tiny lines, like the owl's cry itself, before the verse settles into the steadier "a merry note, / While greasy Joan doth keel the pot." The short lines and bouncing rhythm keep the song light, almost like a nursery rhyme, which suits its good-humoured tone.
The imagery appeals to nearly every sense. Cold is felt on the skin ("blood is nipp'd"), seen in the icicles and the snow where birds sit brooding, and heard in the howling wind and the coughing. Warmth arrives by sound and smell: the hiss of "roasted crabs" (crab apples dropped into a hot drink) and the bubbling pot that Joan cools by stirring, which is what "keel" means. The verbs are small and physical. Dick *blows*, Tom *bears*, the wind *blows*, the crabs *hiss*. Nothing is grand, and that is deliberate. The people are called Dick, Tom, Joan and Marian, the plainest of names, and the poem teases them affectionately. Joan is "greasy" and Marian's nose "looks red and raw," details that no flattering portrait would include. The humour makes them feel like real neighbours, not figures in a picture-book winter.
The owl is the most interesting figure. Calling it "staring" gives it a wide-eyed, slightly uncanny look, and a night bird calling in the dark could easily seem eerie or threatening. Instead the poem declares its cry "a merry note." The word works because of where the listener is standing. The sound comes from outside the cold, but it is heard from within the warm kitchen, and the word "While" links the owl's hooting directly to Joan's cooking. Hardship is still there in every line, but a household can turn even a night-time cry into part of its cheer.
The song comes from Shakespeare's play *Love's Labour's Lost*, where it ends the action, following a song of spring. The "ii" in the title suggests it is the second of a pair, and the two seasons seem designed to balance each other. After all the clever talk of the play's courtiers, the song turns to the lives of ordinary country people. It is significant for the way it makes so much from so little: a handful of everyday details, a simple refrain, and a single surprising word. It shows that a poem about cold and discomfort can leave the reader feeling warm.