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Christmas Poetry (Audiobook)
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Read by Richard Mitchley, Ghizela Rowe & Tim Graham (Unabridged: 1hr 18mins)

Featuring poems by John Donne, Ben Jonson, Christina Rossetti, Rudyard Kipling, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alfred Lord Tennyson & others.

Christmas, they say, comes but once a year.  In these days it seems to also last for much of that year.

For the religious amongst us this annual celebration of the Birth of Christ must seem bitter sweet; it’s acknowledgment by billions of people countered by the pervasive spread of material possessions translating the event to little more than a sales pitch for their own wares.

Most religions celebrate their founders but Christianity seems somehow to have lost possession of one of its key rituals in an ever more secular West.  The spread of globalisation seems to have hindered rather than helped the true meaning of the festival.  Children today are much more interested in what presents they might receive than any spiritual message.  As parents too, most of us buy into this and we seem to indulge our offspring rather than the themes and aims of the festival’s meaning common to us all. 

In this collection we rely on the words and wisdom of such fine poets as John Milton, Emily Dickinson, Sir Walter Scott, Daniel Sheehan, Wordsworth, Longfellow and a whole host of others to absorb us in a Christmas time of hope and togetherness set amongst a landscape of winter wonderment and Nature’s palest palette.  The experiences and memories they share with us speak of a time, of a world that did have a common purpose and an ambition to share good fortune with everyone.

In this compilation - 

1 - Christmas Poetry - An Introroduction
2 - On the Morning of Christs Nativity by John Milton
3 - Nativity by John Donne
4 - Carol by Ben Jonson
5 - A Christmas Carol by Samual Taylor Coleridge
6 - The Nativity by Henry Vaughan
7 - An Ode of the Birth of Our Saviour by Robert Herrick
8 - New Prince New Pomp by Robert Southwell
9 - A Christmas Carol by Aubrey De Vere
10 - The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Christopher Smart
11 - The Three Kings by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
12 - A Christmas Carol by G K Chesterton
13 - The Beautiful Mother by Jacopone da Todi
14 - Upon Christ His Birth by Sir John Suckling
15 - No Mercy Here by Daniel Sheehan
16 - A Nativity by Rudyard Kipling
17 - God Rest by Daniel Sheehan
18 - The Oxen by Thomas Hardy
19 - A Visit From St Nicholas ('Twas The Night Before Christmas) by Clement Moore
20 - Old Christmastide (An Extract) by Sir Walter Scott
21 - Christmas Eve by Christina Rossetti
22 - The Snow Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson
23 - The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens
24 - The First Snowfall by James Russell Lowell
25 - The White Snow by Guillaume Apollinaire
26 - Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
27 - Ring Out Wild Bells. Christmas Poem by Alfred lord Tennyson
28 - Minstrels.  A Christmas Poem by William Wordsworth
29 - As Sleigh Bells Seem In Summer by Emily Dickinson
30 - Christmas At Sea by Robert Louis Stevenson
31 - The House of Christmas by G K Chesterton
32 - The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell
33 - Winter Sunset by Katharine Tynan
34 - Joseph by G K Chesterton
35 - Winter Evening Hymn To My Fire by James Russell Lowell
36 - In The Bleak Midwinter by Christina Georgina Rossetti
37 - The Farm Woman's Winter by Thomas Hardy
38 - The Savior Must Have Been A Docile Gentleman by Emily Dickinson
39 - Winter by Robert Louis Stevenson
40 - Christmas Carol by Sara Teasdale
41 - Winter Heavens by George Meredith
42 - The Mahogany Tree by William Makepeace Thackeray
43 - Christmas Fancies by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
44 - The Masque of Christmas by Ben Jonson
45 - Christmas For Atheists by Daniel Sheehan
46 - Christmas Poem by  Robert Herrick
47 - December Sales Drive by Daniel Sheehan
48 - The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
49 - The Mother of God by William Butler Yeats
50 - A Christmas Ghost Story by Thomas Hardy
51 - A New Years Eve in Wartime by Thomas Hardy
52 - Ghosts of the Old Year by James Weldon Johnson
53 - 'Twas Just This Time Last Year I Died by Emily Dickinson
54 - The Meeting by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
55 - The Old Year by John Clare
56 - The Death of the Old Year by Alfred Lord Tennyson
57 - At the Entering of the New Year by Thomas Hardy
58 - Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns