Thalia

‘Winter is the time for reading poetry’ John Betjeman points out in his comfortably be-slippered essay which prefaces this collection of poems to cheer you through the wild and the wind and the wet of our darkest months. Here are many winter favourites from Walter Scott, William Cowper, the obscure English curate James Hurdis to John Clare, Thomas Hardy and Robert Louis Stevenson. The selection is grouped by themes including The Start Of Winter, Winter Fires, Children in Winter, Deep Winter, The New Year and the End of Winter. With Roger McGough and Benjamin Zephaniah adding a strongly contemporary note by reading their own poems, this is a seasonable anthology to treasure.

Poems for the Winter Season is read by Sandra Douglas Weir and David Pepper, the winners of the Naxos AudioBooks/The Times Voice of the Year.

INCLUDED IN Poetry for the Winter Season
John Betjeman Winter At Home
James Hurdis from The Village Curate
Laurence Binyon The Burning Of The Leaves
W B Yeats The Smell of Chrysanthemums
W B Yeats The Wild Swans AT Coole
William Cowper from The Task:The Winter Evening
A E Houseman A Shropshire Lad
Thomas Hood No!
Shu Hui Hot Cake
John Clare Signs of Winter
John Clare November
Charlotte Brontë Winter Stories
Thomas Campion Now Winter Nights
Lu T’ung from The Eclipse Of The Moon
Anonymous The Ways Of Wood
Alfred, Lord Tennyson from The Window
W B Yeats When You Are Old
Edward Fitzgerald Old Song
Robert Louis Stevenson Armies In The Fire
Thomas Hardy Logs On The Hearth: A Memory Of A Sister
Robert Lousi Stevenson Picture Books In Winter
Anonymous from Songs For The Nursery
John Clare from January
Edward Thomas Snow
A A Milne King John’s Christmas
Roger McGough The Trouble With Snowmen
Robert Louis Stevenson Winter-Time
William Shakespeare Winter (from Love’s Labour’s Lost V,ii)
William Morris Inscription For An Old Bed
Thomas Hardy Snow In The Suburbs
Tu Mu Travelling In The Mountains
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Frost At Midnight
Robert Bridges London Snow
Thomas Nashe Winter, Plague And Pestilence
Ogden Nash Winter Complaint
Thomas Hardy The Farm Womans Winter
Thomas Hood from Epicurean Reminiscences Of A Sentimentalist
Emily Brontë Silent Is The House
Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cold Earth Slept Below
William Strode Chloris In The Snow
John Keats The Eve Of St Agnes
Alfred Domett A Glee For Winter
Christina Rossetti In The Bleak Midwinter
Eleanor Farjeon The Old Shepherds
Clement Moore The Night Before Christmas
Sir Walter Scott from Marmion
Benjamin Zephaniah Talking Turkeys
Anonymous The Twelve Days Of Christmas
E Nesbit New Year Snow
John Clare The Old Year
William Cowper To The Nightingale Which The Author Heard Sing On New Year’s Day
Edward Thomas The New Year
Robert Burns Auld Lang Syne
Oliver Herford I Heard A Bird Sing
Samuel Rogers An Epitaph On A Robin Redbreast
Anonymous The Lover In Winter Plaineth For The Spring
Charles Causley At Candlemas
Robert Herrick Ceremonies For Candlemas Eve
Thomas Hardy The Darkling Thrush
Roger McGough The Fight Of The Year