It came upon the midnight clear

It came upon the midnight clear. Edmund Hamilton Sears* (1810-1876). First printed in the Christian Register, a Boston periodical, 29 December 1849. The editor, a Dr Morison, told Alfred P. Putnam, the editor of Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith (Boston, 1875), that Sears had sent him the hymn, and that he was ‘very much delighted with it’. He went on: ‘I always feel that, however poor my Christmas sermon may be, the reading and singing of this hymn are enough to make up for all deficiencies’ (Putnam, p. 308). In Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith Putnam printed Sears’ five stanzas, following the earlier ‘Calm on the listening ear of night’*. The stanzas are too well known to need...