This is a compilation and publication of sleep-related poetry, exalting the delight of sleep, as well as bemoaning the lack of it.
First published in 1917, The Glugs of Gosh satirizes Australian life at the start of the twentieth century - but the absurdities it catalogs seem just as prevalent at the start of the twenty-first. The foolishness of kings, the arrogance of the elite, the gullibility of crowds, the pride of the self-righteous, the unthinking following of tradition - all find themselves the targets of C. J. Dennis' biting wit.
Volunteers bring you 9 recordings of The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell by Algernon Charles Swinburne. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for September 18, 2011.
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in every year from 1903 to 1907 and again in 1909.
Volunteers bring you 10 different recordings of Love's Wantonness by Thomas Lodge. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of August 24th, 2008.
"The Keepsake, or, Poems and Pictures For Childhood and Youth", is a collection of twenty pastoral poems published as one collection in London, 1818. The topics are moral encouragement for children, young and old alike.
Volunteers bring you 22 recordings of Travels by the Fireside by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for May 6, 2012.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator. He predominantly wrote lyric poems which are known for their musicality and which often presented stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. He has been criticized, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses.
To celebrate Easter, Volunteers bring you nine different recordings of various psalms from the World English Bible. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of April 9th, 2006.
Volunteers bring you 12 recordings of The Old Roller Towel by Bert Leston Taylor. This was the Weekly Poetry project for February 27, 2011.
Ballads of a Bohemian is a collection of poems tied together by the narration of the "author" Stephen Poore. The poems speak of bohemian life in Paris before the war, his experiences during World War I and its aftermath.
A collection of poems by the English war poet and soldier of the First World War, Wilfred Owen. Owen is regarded by historians as the leading poet of the First World War, known for his war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare. It stood in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Only five of Owen's poems had been published before his death, one of which was in fragmentary form. Only one week before the end of the war, whilst attempting to traverse a canal, he was shot in the head and killed.
Emily Dickinson has come to be regarded as one of the quintessential poets of 19th century America. A very private poet with a very quiet and reclusive life, her poetry was published posthumously and immediately found a wide audience. While she echoed the romantic natural themes of her times, her style was much more free and irregular, causing many to criticize her and editors to "correct" her. In the early 20th century, when poetic style had become much looser, new audiences learned to appreciate her work. Here collected are many of her most contemplative, most rebellious, and "dark" works, expressing her frustrations with the behavioral confines of her times, and the confines of being human and unknowing of eternity.
The Aeneid is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half treats the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed. The poem was commissioned from Vergil by the Emperor Augustus to glorify Rome. Several critics think that the hero Aeneas' abandonment of the Cartheginian Queen Dido, is meant as a statement of how Augustus' enemy, Mark Anthony, should have behaved with the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra. (Summay by Wikipedia and Karen Merline)
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry. Most of the poems in the 1798 edition were written by Wordsworth, with Coleridge contributing only four poems to the collection, including one of his most famous works, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". (Additionally, though only the two writers are credited for the works, William's sister Dorothy Wordsworth's diary which held powerful descriptions of everyday surroundings influenced William's poetry immensely)
A heartwarming collection of nursery rhymes that will take you back to your childhood!
Yvain, the Knight of the Lion is a romance by Chrétien de Troyes. It was probably written in the 1170s simultaneously with Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, and includes several references to the action in that poem. In the poem, Yvain seeks to avenge his cousin Calogrenant who had been defeated by an otherworldly knight beside a magical storm-making fountain in the forest of Broceliande.
“The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.”
Milton composes his last extended work as a tragedy according to the classical Unities of Time, Place and Action. Nevertheless it “never was intended for the stage” and is here declaimed by a single reader.
Samson the blinded captive, in company with the Chorus of friends and countrymen, receives his visitors on their varying missions and through them his violent story is vividly recalled. Then he is summoned to give a final demonstration of God-given strength to entertain the Philistines, his captors. Famously – and of course, offstage – his performance brings the house down.
Manfred is a dramatic poem in three acts by Lord Byron, and possibly a self confessional work. A noble, Manfred, is haunted by the memory of some unspeakable crime. In seeking for forgetfulness and oblivion, he wanders between his castle and the mountains. He has several encounters with the people who try to assist him, as well as spirits that rule nature and human destiny. The poem explores themes of morality, religion, guilt and the human condition.
Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) is British writer Christina Rossetti's first book of poetry. The title poem is her most famous work: a creepy and sensual tale of two sisters' temptation to eat forbidden fruits. The poems explore themes of death, faith, isolation, and love, with a section of devotional pieces at the end.
I sing the Song of Hiawatha,
Brave of heart and strong of arm.
Daughter's son of old Nokomis,
Fathered by the harsh West Wind.
With its regular, beating rhythm, the Song of Hiawatha has often been parodied, but in truth, it is a powerful, emotional epic; a hero's life, his loves and suffering. The legends and traditions of the North American Indian swirl together through the tale like a mountain stream, tumbling white over the rocks, and caressing the mossy tree roots.
A House of Pomegranates is a collection of fairy tales, written by Oscar Wilde, that was published as a second collection for The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). Wilde once said that this collection was "intended neither for the British child nor the British public."
The stories included in this collection are as follows:
The Young King
The Birthday of the Infanta
The Fisherman and his Soul
The Star-Child
"I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree;
A tree whose hungry mouth is presd against the sweet earth's flowing breast ...".
Almost all of us, including myself of course, have heard and enjoyed those famous words which begin Kilmer's poem, Trees. There is even a National Forest in the United States named in honor of this poem. Here is a recording of the entire book of poems in which it was first published in 1914. Joyce Kilmer was an American writer and poet mainly remembered for this short poem but he was a prolific poet whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural world as well as his Roman Catholic religious faith, Kilmer was also a journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor. While most of his works are largely unknown, a select few of his poems remain popular and are published frequently in anthologies.
At the time of his deployment to Europe during World War I (1914–1918), Kilmer was considered the leading American Roman Catholic poet and lecturer of his generation, whom critics often compared to British contemporaries G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc . He enlisted in the New York National Guard and was deployed to France with the 69th Infantry Regiment (the famous "Fighting 69th") in 1917. He was killed by a sniper's bullet at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age of 31. He was married to Aline Murray, who later became a poet and author in her own right, with whom he had five children.
Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell was a volume of poetry published jointly by the three Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne in 1846, and their first work to ever go in print. To evade contemporary prejudice against female writers, the Bronte sisters adopted androgynous first names. Marked by profound sentiments, gravity and melodious harmony, the poems are strewn on the fields of soulful love, rueful reminiscence and the immortal yearnings of a Christian soul, and represent a fragrant assemblage of noetic flowers from the glebes of olden England. For those not familiar with the Bronte sisters' poetry, it should be noted that many of their poems were written in the context of their fictional, shared worlds of Gondal and Angria.
(Written by Ellis Christoff)
Rupert Chawner Brooke (August 3, 1887 – April 23, 1915) was an English poet known for his idealistic War Sonnets written during the First World War (especially The Soldier), as well as for his poetry written outside of war, especially The Old Vicarage, Grantchester and The Great Lover. He was also known for his boyish good looks, which prompted the Irish poet William Butler Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England".
Lydia Maria Child, an American abolitionist, compiled this collection of short stories and poems by former slaves and noted activists as an inspiration to freed slaves. In her dedication to the freedmen, she urges those who can read, to read these stories aloud to others to share the strength and courage of and accomplishments of colored men and women. In that spirit, this recording aims to gives that voice a permanent record.
The Wit and Humor of America is a 10 volume series. In this, the tenth volume, 62 short stories and poems have been gathered from 42 authors. This volume is sure to delight listeners.
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa. With more than 74,000 verses, Mahabharata is said to be the longest poem. Mahabharata tells the story of the epic Kurukshetra War and the fates of the cousin brothers Kauravas and the Pandavas. But more than that the Mahabharata contains much philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or 'purusharthas'. The latter are enumerated as dharma (right action), artha (purpose), kama (pleasure), and moksha (liberation).
Alfred Noyes, in the blank-verse epic "Drake", fictionalizes the historical Francis Drake, who, during the reign of Elizabeth I of England, sailed (and plundered) on the Spanish Main and beyond.
Mostly a collection of story-telling poems told by a group of friends in a tavern late one night. "Tales" includes the famous Paul Revere's ride, together with poems of many tales, countries and styles.
The [i]Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern[/i], is a work of enormous proportions. Setting out with the simple goal of offering "American households a mass of good reading", the editors drew from literature of all times and all kinds what they considered the best pieces of human writing, and compiled an ambitious collection of 45 volumes (with a 46th being an index-guide). Besides the selection and translation of a huge number of poems, letters, short stories and sections of books, the collection offers, before each chapter, a short essay about the author or subject in question. In many cases, chapters contemplate not one author, but certain groups of works, organized by nationality, subject or period; there is, thus, a chapter on Accadian-Babylonian literature, one on the Holy Grail, and one on Chansons, for example.
The result is a collection that holds the interest, for the variety of subjects and forms, but also as a means of first contact with such famous and important authors that many people have heard of, but never read, such as Abelard, Dante or Lord Byron. According to the editor Charles Dudley Warner, this collection "is not a library of reference only, but a library to be read."
This first volume contains chapters starting with the letter A.
Mince Pie is a compilation of humorous sketches, poetry, and essays written by Christopher Morley. Morley sets the tone in the preface: "If one asks what excuse there can be for prolonging the existence of these trifles, my answer is that there is no excuse. But a copy on the bedside shelf may possibly pave the way to easy slumber. Only a mind "debauched by learning" (in Doctor Johnson's phrase) will scrutinize them too anxiously."
A collection of love poems.
A comic rendering in verse of well-loved Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, each ending with a moral and full of puns. The titles of the tales themselves make another verse.
A collection of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Liber Amoris is unlike anything Hazlitt wrote and probably like nothing you've come across before. On the face of it it tells the story of Hazlitt's infatuation with his landlords daughter. Hazlitt was middle aged and she young and pretty, a bit of a coquette from the sound of it. It turned out badly for Hazlitt and the book tells the story of this doomed love. Critics have always been divided about the merit of the piece. Even those who see its merit often feel more comfortable with his polished literary works, and perhaps rightly so. This is not a work to make you feel comfortable.
I'd like to propose though that there is more to this as a work of art. It was the beginning of the era of the auto-biography that was arguably started by Rousseau in his Confessions. Going beyond Rousseau's mild self criticism, Hazlitt gives a ruthless self portrait (as well as an unsparing portrait of the object of his affections) of the weakness and mental turmoil that he experienced during the love affair. In this it is much closer to the theatre of cruelty of Antonin Artaud in which a pure artisitc truth is revealed through 'shattering a false reality that lies like a shroud over our perceptions'. Hazlitt had this in spades.
So if you are looking for a polished stroll through the romantic sensibility this is not for you. This is about a close as you'll get to participating in a romantic car crash. A work of great art.
Notes: Nick Duncan
The pieces gathered into this volume were, with two exceptions, written for the entertainment of a private circle, without any view to publication. The editor would express her thanks to the writers, who, at her solicitation, have allowed them to be printed. They are published with the hope of aiding a work of charity,—the establishment of an Agency for the benefit of the poor in Cambridge,—to which the proceeds of the sale will be devoted.
The Wit and Humor of America is a 10 volume series. In this, the ninth volume, 37 short stories and poems have been gathered from 31 authors. This volume is sure to delight listeners.
Some day an enterprising editor may find time to glean from the whole field of Canadian literature a representative collection of wit and humour. . . . The present little collection obviously makes no such ambitious claim. It embraces, however, what are believed to be representative examples of the work of some of our better-known writers, many of which will no doubt be quite familiar to Canadian readers, but perhaps none the less welcome on that account.
This book of poetry by G.K. Chesterton, originally published in 1922, contain 35 poems on a variety of subjects.
Stephen Vincent Benét (July 22, 1898 – March 13, 1943) was an American author, poet, short story writer and novelist. He is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "By the Waters of Babylon".
It was a line of Benet's poetry that gave the title to Dee Brown's famous history of the destruction of Native American tribes by the United States: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. (Summary excerpted from Wikipedia)
This recording includes the Dedication, Foreword and first 16 poems from Young Adventure, A Book of Poems.
Published by the Religious Tract Society in London, The Verse-Book of a Homely Woman is a collection of domestic, spiritual, and fanciful poems from the point of view of a woman, a housewife, and a Christian. The natural, supernatural, and solidly mundane are mixed together as well as separated into two parts: Indoors and Outdoors.
Summary by Clarica.
A collection of short poems on various themes by the author.
This is a subset of the second collection of Gilbert’s “Bab Ballads” – light verses poking fun at the life and people of his time in Gilbert’s unique “topsy-turvey” style. The epitaph on his memorial on the Victoria Embankment in London is “HIS FOE WAS FOLLY AND HIS WEAPON WIT”, an epitaph amply exemplified in these verses.
The Bab Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan. In writing the Bab Ballads, Gilbert developed his unique "topsy-turvy" style, where the humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. The Ballads also reveal Gilbert's cynical and satirical approach to humour. They became famous on their own, as well as being a source for plot elements, characters and songs that Gilbert would recycle in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The Bab Ballads take their name from Gilbert's childhood nickname, and he later began to sign his illustrations "Bab".
This is a collection of poems about Charleston and the South Carolina Lowcountry. DuBose Heyward was a Charleston native best known for his novel Porgy, which was the basis for the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess. Hervey Allen, who later wrote Anthony Adverse, met Heyward after moving to Charleston to teach. Together they founded the Poetry Society of South Carolina, which is still active today.
A collection of poems with varying subjects.