Awake, awake the sacred song. Anne Steele. [Christmas.] First published in her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, &c, 1760, vol. i. p. 85, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed "The Incarnate Saviour." It was also included in the 1780 edition of the Poems, and in D. Sedgwick's reprint of her Hymns, 1859. It came into common use by being adopted by Ash and Evans in their Bristol Collection, 1769, No. 88, from whence it passed into a few hymnals. It is still in use in America, and is given in Hatfield's Church Hymn Book, 1872, the Baptist Praise Book, 1871, and Songs for the Sanctuary, 1865, the first omitting stanza vi. and the remaining two stanza iv.
-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)