Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator and naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of the bestselling H Is for Hawk, as well as a cultural history of falcons, titled Falcon, and three collections of poetry, including Shaler's Fish. Macdonald was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, has worked as a professional falconer, and has assisted with the management of raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. She now writes for TheNew York Times Magazine.

Introduction - i: Introduction Unit - 1: Spring Poem - 1: 'The year's at the spring' - Robert Browning Poem - 2: I so liked Spring - Charlotte Mew Poem - 3: There Will Come Soft Rains - Sara Teasdale Poem - 4: To a Snowdrop - William Wordsworth Poem - 5: February Twilight - Sara Teasdale Poem - 6: Spring - William Blake Poem - 7: Thaw - Edward Thomas Poem - 8: Spring - Christina Rossetti Poem - 9: Her Anxiety - W. B. Yeats Poem - 10: Invitation to the Country - George Meredith Poem - 11: To my Sister - William Wordsworth Poem - 12: 'Dear March - Come In -' - Emily Dickinson Poem - 13: The Lamb - William Blake Poem - 14: March - Anon Poem - 15: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - William Wordsworth Poem - 16: To Daffodils - Robert Herrick Poem - 17: Mothering Sunday - George Hare Leonard Poem - 18: I Watched a Blackbird - Thomas Hardy Poem - 19: Loveliest of trees - A. E. Houseman Poem - 20: The Cuckoo - Anon Poem - 21: The Cuckoo - Anon Poem - 22: The Woods and Banks - W. H. Davies Poem - 23: Little Trotty Wagtail - John Clare Poem - 24: Home Thoughts from Abroad - Robert Browning Poem - 25: On a Lane in Spring John Clare Poem - 26: Spring - Gerard Manley Hopkins Poem - 27: The Starlight Night - Gerard Manley Hopkins Poem - 28: Tall Nettles - Edward Thomas Poem - 29: 'When that I was and a little tiny boy' - William Shakespeare Poem - 30: Sonnet 98 - William Shakespeare Poem - 31: But These Things Also - Edward Thomas Poem - 32: The Argument of His Book Robert Herrick Poem - 33: The Song of Wandering Aengus - W. B. Yeats Poem - 34: A Brilliant Day - Charles Tennyson Turner Unit - 2: Summer Poem - 1: Summer - Christina Rossetti Poem - 2: The Happy Countryman - Nicholas Breton Poem - 3: A Day - Emily Dickinson Poem - 4: My Heart Leaps Up - William Wordsworth Poem - 5: The Merry Month of May - Thomas Dekker Poem - 6: 'Sumer is icumen in' - Anon Poem - 7: The Throstle - Alfred, Lord Tennyson Poem - 8: The Landrail - John Clare Poem - 9: The Lake Isle of Innisfree - W. B. Yeats Poem - 10: Seven Times One: Exultation - Jean Ingelow Poem - 11: This Lime-tree Bower my Prison - Samuel Taylor Coleridge Poem - 12: The Cow - Robert Louis Stevenson Poem - 13: The Frog - Anon. Poem - 14: Little Fish - D. H. Lawrence Poem - 15: Heaven - Rupert Brooke Poem - 16: To Make a Prairie - Emily Dickinson Poem - 17: The Unknown Bird - Edward Thomas Poem - 18: To a Skylark - Percy Bysshe Shelley Poem - 19: Trees - Joyce Kilmer Poem - 20: The Sweet o' the Year - George Meredith Poem - 21: Ladybird! Ladybird! - Emily Brontë Poem - 22: Daisies - Christina Rossetti Poem - 23: Where the Bee Sucks - William Shakespeare Poem - 24: The Gardener - Anon Poem - 25: The Cries of London - Anon Poem - 26: Scarborough Fair - Anon Poem - 27: from A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare Poem - 28: Summer Dawn - William Morris Poem - 29: Careless Rambles - John Clare Poem - 30: A Green Cornfield - Christina Rossetti Poem - 31: The Caterpillar - Christina Rossetti Poem - 32: To a Butterfly - William Wordsworth Poem - 33: Adlestrop - Edward Thomas Poem - 34: Fly Away, Fly Away Over the Sea - Christina Rossetti Poem - 35: Epitaph on a Hare - William Cowper Poem - 36: A London Plane-Tree - Amy Levy Poem - 37: In the Fields - Charlotte Mew Poem - 38: Meeting at Night - Robert Browning Unit - 3: Autumn Poem - 1: To Autumn - John Keats Poem - 2: Leisure - W. H. Davies Poem - 3: from Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun - Walt Whitman Poem - 4: Pied Beauty - Gerard Manley Hopkins Poem - 5: The Glory - Edward Thomas Poem - 6: The Rainy Day - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Poem - 7: Autumn Rain - D. H. Lawrence Poem - 8: Digging - Edward Thomas Poem - 9: Autumn Fires - Robert Louis Stevenson Poem - 10: Now is the Time for the Burning of the Leaves - Laurence Binyon Poem - 11: Moonlit Apples - John Drinkwater Poem - 12: The Lane - Edward Thomas Poem - 13: The Wild Swans at Coole - W. B. Yeats Poem - 14: 'Western wind, when wilt thou blow?' - Anon. Poem - 15: Who Has Seen the Wind? - Christina Rossetti Poem - 16: from The Garden - Andrew Marvell Poem - 17: Autumn Birds - John Clare Poem - 18: The Windhover - Gerard Manley Hopkins Poem - 19: The Owl - Alfred, Lord Tennyson Poem - 20: Sweet Suffolke Owle - Anon Poem - 21: Rural Evening - Lord De Tabley Poem - 22: The Hayloft - Robert Louis Stevenson Poem - 23: The Solitary Reaper - William Wordsworth Poem - 24: To a Squirrel at Kyle-Na-No- W. B. Yeats Poem - 25: The Way through the Woods - Rudyard Kipling Poem - 26: The Fisherman's Wife - Amy Lowell Poem - 27: Sign of the Times - Paul Laurence Dunbar Poem - 28: Fall, Leaves, Fall - Emily Brontë Poem - 29: Pleasant Sounds - John Clare Poem - 30: A Noiseless, Patient Spider - Walt Whitman Poem - 31: Something Told the Wild Geese - Rachel Field Unit - 4: Winter Poem - 1: To a Mouse - Robert Burns Poem - 2: Spellbound - Emily Brontë Poem - 3: Winter-Time - Robert Louis Stevenson Poem - 4: Winter - Gerard Manley Hopkins Poem - 5: A Winter Night - William Barnes Poem - 6: Snow Storm - John Clare Poem - 7: No! - Thomas Hood Poem - 8: Sheep in Winter - John Clare Poem - 9: Snow - Edward Thomas Poem - 10: Out in the Dark - Edward Thomas Poem - 11: The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House - Thomas Hardy Poem - 12: from As You Like It - William Shakespeare Poem - 13: A Winter Bluejay - Sara Teasdale Poem - 14: Birds at Winter Nightfall - Thomas Hardy Poem - 15: The Darkling Thrush - Thomas Hardy Poem - 16: Little Robin Redbreast - Anon. Poem - 17: Frost at Midnight - Samuel Taylor Coleridge Poem - 18: Up in the Morning Early - Robert Burns Poem - 19: In Tenebris - Ford Madox Ford Poem - 20: The Holly and the Ivy - Anon. Poem - 21: The First Tree in the Greenwood - Anon. Poem - 22: The Oxen - Thomas Hardy Index - ii: Index of Poets Index - iii: Index of Titles Index - iv: Index of First Lines