Poems for Christmas

Poems for Christmas is an exquisitely produced gift anthology which is guaranteed to get anyone in the festive spirit. Part of the Macmillan Collectors Library series, featuring expert introductions for your favourite classics. This edition features an introduction by Judith Flanders, author of Christmas: A Biography. Through the generations, poets from William Shakespeare to Thomas Hardy and from John Donne to Christina Rossetti have been inspired to celebrate the Christmas season in verse. Just as we cherish our Christmas traditions now, so many of the great poets wrote beautifully about the Christmas story, magical wintry landscapes, festive traditions and making merry. And then, of course, there are the much-loved songs and carols from around the world that we still sing today, many of which are included in this enchanting anthology.

Judith Flanders is the author of the bestselling The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed (2003); A Circle of Sisters (2001), which was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award; the New York Times bestselling The Invention of Murder (2011), shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-fiction; The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London (2012), shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times History Book of the Year; The Making of Home (2014); and Christmas: A Biography (2017). In her leisure time, she also writes the Sam Clair series of comic crime novels.

Introduction - i: Introduction Unit - 1: Christmas is Coming Poem - 1: Christmas is Coming - Traditional Poem - 2: A Christmas Blessing - Traditional Poem - 3: Now Thrice Welcome, Christmas - Traditional Poem - 4: Deck the Halls - Traditional Poem - 5: We Wish You a Merry Christmas - Traditional Poem - 6: Pudding Charms - Charlotte Druitt Cole Poem - 7: The Christmas Pudding - Traditional Poem - 8: Christmas Plum Pudding - Clifton Bingham Poem - 9: A Dish for a Poet - Traditional Poem - 10: Yule Log - Robert Herrick Poem - 11: Minstrels - William Wordsworth Poem - 12: Old Christmastide - Sir Walter Scott Poem - 13: December - John Clare Poem - 14: French Noel - William Morris Poem - 15: Wassail, Wassail - Traditional Poem - 16: Here We Come A-Wassailing - Traditional Poem - 17: Nowell Sing We - Traditional Unit - 2: I Sing of a Maiden Poem - 1: I Sing of a Maiden - Traditional Poem - 2: A Virgin Most Pure - Traditional Poem - 3: The Mother of God - W. B. Yeats Poem - 4: The Cherry Tree Carol - Traditional Poem - 5: Joseph - G. K. Chesterton Poem - 6: The Angel Gabriel - Traditional tr. Sabine Baring-Gould Poem - 7: Once in Royal David's City - Cecil Frances Alexander Poem - 8: O Little Town of Bethlehem - Phillips Brooks Poem - 9: Away in a Manger - Traditional Poem - 10: The Old Hark - Traditional Poem - 11: Angels, from the Realms of Glory - James Montgomery Poem - 12: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing - Charles Wesley Poem - 13: A Hymn for Christmas Day - Traditional Poem - 14: Joy to the World! - Isaac Watts Poem - 15: In Dulci Jubilo - Traditional Poem - 16: Christmas, A Song of Joy at Dawn - Traditional Poem - 17: O Come, All Ye Faithful - Traditional tr. F. Oakeley and W. T. Brooke Unit - 3: Peace and Lullabies Poem - 1: Peace - Henry Vaughan Poem - 2: A Child this Day is Born - Traditional Poem - 3: Silent Night - Joseph Mohr tr. John Freeman Young Poem - 4: Christus Natus Est - Countee Cullen Poem - 5: On Christmas Day to My Heart - Clement Paman Poem - 6: An Ode of the Birth of Our Saviour - Robert Herrick Section - 7: The House of Christmas - G. K. Chesterton Poem - 8: The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ - Christopher Smart Poem - 9: New Prince, New Pomp - Robert Southwell Poem - 10: Past Three O'Clock - George Ratcliffe Woodward Poem - 11: Love Came Down at Christmas - Christina Rossetti Poem - 12: Before the Paling of the Stars - Christina Rossetti Poem - 13: The Coventry Carol - Traditional Poem - 14: A Cradle Song - William Blake Poem - 15: The Rocking Carol - Percy Dearmer Poem - 16: Infant Holy - Traditional tr. Edith M.G. Reed Poem - 17: Sing Lullaby - Sabine Baring-Gould Poem - 18: Welcome to Heaven's King - Traditional Poem - 19: Hymn for Christmas Day - John Byrom Poem - 20: It Was on Christmas Day - Traditional Poem - 21: I Saw a Stable - Mary Elizabeth Coleridge Unit - 4: Holly and Ivy Poem - 1: Holly - Christina Rossetti Poem - 2: Advent - Christina Rossetti Poem - 3: Green Grow'th the Holly - Traditional Poem - 4: Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming - Traditional tr. Theodore Baker and Harriet R. K. Spaeth Poem - 5: The Mahogany Tree - William Makepeace Thackeray Poem - 6: The Holly and the Ivy - Traditional Poem - 7: The First Tree in the Greenwood - Traditional Unit - 5: Bird and Beasts Poem - 1: Eddi's Service - Rudyard Kipling Poem - 2: The Oxen - Thomas Hardy Poem - 3: Sheep in Winter - John Clare Poem - 4: While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks - Nahum Tate Poem - 6: Go, Tell it on the Mountain - Traditional Poem - 7: The Shepherds' Carol - Traditional Poem - 8: Out in the Dark - Edward Thomas Poem - 9: Birds at Winter Nightfall - Thomas Hardy Poem - 10: Little Robin Redbreast - Traditional Unit - 6: Snow and Ice Poem - 1: Christmas Night - Traditional Poem - 2: The First Nowell - Traditional Poem - 3: Snow Storm - John Clare Poem - 4: See, Amid the Winter's Snow - Edward Caswall Poem - 5: A Winter Night - William Barnes Section - 6: Winter Gerard - Manley Hopkins Poem - 7: Winter-Time - Robert Louis Stevenson Poem - 8: Snow Edward Thomas Poem - 9: from As You Like It - William Shakespeare Poem - 10: Up in the Morning Early - Robert Burns Poem - 11: In Tenebris - Ford Madox Ford Poem - 12: In the Bleak Midwinter - Christina Rossetti Poem - 13: It Came Upon the Midnight Clear - Edmund Hamilton Sears Poem - 14: Snow in the Suburbs - Thomas Hardy Poem - 15: from The Prelude - William Wordsworth Poem - 16: from Frost at Midnight - Samuel Taylor Coleridge Poem - 17: A Frosty Day - Lord de Tabley Poem - 18: Ice on the Highway - Thomas Hardy Poem - 19: Now Winter Nights Enlarge - Thomas Campion Unit - 7: Nativity Poem - 1: Christmas - George Herbert Poem - 2: The Nativity - Henry Vaughan Poem - 3: Nativity - John Donne Poem - 4: Upon Christ His Birth - Sir John Suckling Poem - 5: Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913 - Robert Bridges Poem - 6: from In Memoriam - Alfred, Lord Tennyson Poem - 7: Christmas Eve - Christina Rossetti Unit - 8: The Earthly Paradise Poem - 1: from The Earthly Paradise - William Morris Poem - 2: God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen - Traditional Poem - 3: Carol - Ben Jonson Poem - 4: Christmas at Sea - Robert Louis Stevenson Poem - 5: Christmas in India - Rudyard Kipling Poem - 6: From East to West, From Shore to Shore - Traditional Unit - 9: Kings Poem - 1: The Three Kings - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Poem - 2: We Three Kings - John Henry Hopkins Poem - 3: As With Gladness Men of Old - William Chatterton Dix Poem - 4: Good King Wenceslas - John Mason Neale Poem - 5: The Mystic Magi Robert Stephen Hawker Poem - 6: Kings Came Riding - Charles Williams Unit - 10: I Saw Three Ships Poem - 1: I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In - Traditional Poem - 2: As I Sat on a Sunny Bank - Traditional Poem - 3: To- morrow Shall Be My Dancing Day - Traditional Poem - 4: The True Christmas - Henry Vaughan Poem - 5: A Visit from St Nicholas - Clement Clarke Moore Poem - 6: What Billy Wanted - Traditional Poem - 7: A Little Christmas Card - Traditional Poem - 8: The Twelve Days of Christmas - Traditional Unit - 11: New Year Poem - 1: Another Christmas Gone - Traditional Poem - 2: The Old Year - John Clare Poem - 3: The New Year - Traditional Poem - 4: New Year - Christopher Smart Poem - 5: The New Year - Traditional Poem - 5: Auld Lang Syne - Robert Burns Poem - 6: Ring Out, Wild Bells - Alfred, Lord Tennyson Poem - 7: Farewell Old Year - Traditional Poem - 8: New Every Morning - Susan Coolidge Poem - 9: The Year - Ella Wheeler Wilcox Poem - 10: from The Tempest - William Shakespeare Index - ii: Index of Poets Index - iii: Index of Titles Index - iv: Index of First Lines