All wear the freezing rose
This winter season,
Like the flesh we carry
A common agony
The ground of joys and sorrows.
When all are covered so in glory
Who is to be proud
Who is to be bowed in shame?
Snow upon the roof-tree
Snow upon the leafing tree.
 

from `The Freezing Rose'
                

The Observer described Anne Ridler as 'one of the best poets of her generation'. Anne Ridler's first book, Poems, was published in 1939. She worked on the Faber editorial staff (1935-1940), for a time as assistant to T. S. Eliot. Her poetry developed in the light and shadow of the poets of the day - MacNeice and Auden, but also Durrell and Watkins. As  important is a deep affinity with the secular and devotional writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ambitious for her poems, she was never ambitious for reputation. Like that of her friend E.J.Scovell, her work has not received proper recognition until now.

The Listener called her 'a purposeful and undistracted poet, with a maturely consistent technique at her command.' This collection contains all that she wished to preserve from her volumes of lyric poetry, together with the choruses from the play The Trial of Thomas Cranmer, and a masque for music by Elizabeth Maconchy, The Jesse Tree.

She published ten collections of poetry, original and translated opera libretti, including Monteverdi's Orfeo. She was also the author of verse plays which have been performed in Oxford and London. The handsome John Piper cover image was originally drawn for The Jesse Tree.