Christmas Poetry & Prose – read by Great Voices

Preparations

Clement Moore: ‘Twas the Night before Christmas (A Visit from

St.Nicholas) / Basil Rathbone

Robert Frost: Stopping by Woods / Robert Frost

Robert Frost: Dust of Snow / (author)

Eugene Field: When Santa Claus Comes / Jonathan Jones

John Betjeman: Christmas / Alec Guinness

E.E. Cummings: Little Tree / Jonathan Jones

Seasonal Regrets

Emily Dickinson: ‘Twas just this time last year I died /

Annette Daniels Taylor

Alfred Lord Tennyson: Ring out Wild Bells !

(Canto CVI from In Memoriam A.H.H) / Jonathan Jones

Jill Furse: Carol / Robert Donat

Henry W. Longfellow: Christmas Bells / Jonathan Jones

Celebrations & Mythology

Edgar Guest: At Christmas / Jonathan Jones

Theodore Watts-Dunton: Wassail Chorus at the Mermaid

Tavern / Robert Donat

William Wordsworth: Minstrels / Jonathan Jones

Walter de la Mare: Mistletoe / Jonathan Jones

C.Day Lewis: The Christmas Tree / (author)

John Mason Neale: Good King Wenceslas / Jonathan Jones

Christmas Scenes

Shakespeare: When Icycles Hang / Claire Bloom

William Wordsworth: A Boisterous Winter Evening / Alec Clunes

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Frost at Midnight /

Richard Burton & Dulcie Gray

Laurie Lee: Christmas Landscape / Jonathan Jones

Thomas Hardy: Snow in the Suburbs / Carleton Hobbs

James Stephens: Donnybrook / Lewis Jones

Odette Tchernine: The Snow / Dulcie Gray

Biblical

Hilaire Belloc: Noel / Robert Donat

Sara Teasdale: Christmas Carol / Jonathan Jones

T.S. Eliot: Journey of the Magi / Alec Guinness

Thomas Hardy: The Oxen / Robert Donat

Christina Rosetti: In the Bleak Midwinter / Jonathan Jones

John Alexander Chapman: Christus Natus Est / Robert Donat

Anon. Cherry Tree Carol / Alec Guinness

Anon. I Syng of a Mayden (‘Early Carol’) / Robert Donat

St.Francis of Assisi: Prayer / Robert Donat

Prose & New Year

Dylan Thomas: A Child’s Christmas in Wales / (read by author)

Robert Burns: Auld Lang Syne / Frederick Worlock