Written at the height of the Great War, the poems of this volume are suffused with a sense of melancholy and tragedy. Some of the poems (such as "1915: The Trenches") speak directly of war-time scenes and images, but even those which don't do so are permeated with a feeling of loss and desolation occasioned by the War. In spite of this pervading pathos, however, these poems are also filled with haunting beauty of imagery, drawn as Aiken so often does from natural images of wind, sea, and weather.

LibriVox volunteers bring you nine readings of The Train of Life by Edmund Gosse. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of September 28th, 2014.

One of Dante's earliest works, La vita nuova or La vita nova (The New Life) is in a prosimetrum style, a combination of prose and verse, and tells the story of his youthful love for Beatrice. The prose creates the illusion of narrative continuity between the poems; it is Dante's way of reconstructing himself and his art in terms of his evolving sense of the limitations of courtly love (the system of ritualized love and art that Dante and his poet-friends inherited from the Provençal poets, the Sicilian poets of the court of Frederick II, and the Tuscan poets before them)...

LibriVox volunteers bring you 11 recordings of To Sleep by Sir Philip Sidney. This was the Weekly Poetry project for January 23, 2014. Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 – 17 October 1586) was an English poet, courtier and soldier, who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age.

This poem is taken from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll.

Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest short story writer".

This is a collection of 30 poems read by LibriVox volunteers for June 2015.

This is a collection of 27 poems read by LibriVox volunteers for August 2015.

LibriVox volunteers bring you 13 recordings of Spring, 1918 by Sara Teasdale. This was the Weekly Poetry project for May 11th, 2014.

LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 readings of Romance by Andrew Lang, probably best known as Edward Elgar's song My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land. Interestingly, Lang initially refused permission for his words to be used as lyrics, and Elgar's wife Alice wrote alternative words Afar, amidst the Sunny Isles for the song. However, Lang later relented and gave permission for his poem to be used. The poem was initially published in The Century Magazine, May 1882, and this is the version recorded here. Later collections of Lang's poetry omit the third verse.

This is a collection of 18 poems read by LibriVox volunteers for July 2014.

This is a volume of poems by Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1919. Many of them concern wartime experiences.

Montgomery's poem on winter is an analogy for life, symbolizing the three life stages of youth, adulthood and old age.

LibriVox volunteers bring you eight recordings of "To A Skylark." This is the Fortnightly Poetry for August 8, 2014.To A Skylark was completed by Shelley in late June 1820. It was inspired by an evening walk in the country near Livorno, Italy, with his wife Mary Shelley, and describes the appearance and song of a skylark they come upon.

This is a collection of 22 poems read by LibriVox volunteers for September 2014.

Librivox volunteers bring you 14 readings of My Shadow, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson's famous poem concerns a child's shadow, and it's antics. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of September 7th, 2014.

Popular for his simple, delicate poetry for children, this Irishman wrote these verses for his three children, Gerald, Eva and Henry, and others like them. Typically, they touch on fairies and nature.

Librivox volunteers bring you seven readings of Farewell! – But Whenever – by Thomas Moore. This is the fortnightly poetry project for October 12, 2014.

Librivox volunteers bring you eight readings of An Autumn Walk with Deborah by Aline Kilmer. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of October 12, 2014.

This is a collection of 27 poems read by LibriVox volunteers for December 2015.

Librivox volunteers bring you fifteen readings of In Flanders Fields, one of the more famous poems written during the First World War. John McCrae was a poet and physician from Guelph, Ontario. His close friend, Alexis Helmer, was killed during the battle on May 2. McCrae performed the burial service himself, at which time he noted how poppies quickly grew around the graves of those who died at Ypres. The next day, he composed the poem while sitting in the back of an ambulance.

Librivox volunteers bring you 11 readings of Harbour Dawn by L. M. Montgomery. This was the fortnightly poem for November 23 - December 7, 2014.

A History through Poetry of the exploration and settling of North American by Europeans. Beginning with Leif Erikson, and continuing through the Age of Exploration to the colonies of Virginia and New Amsterdam, including the arrival of the Puritans, the life of Pocahontas, the persecution of the Quakers, and the horror of the Salem Witch Trials, with works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Edward Everett Hale, Benjamin Franklin, William Wordsworth, Julia Ward Howe, and many, many more. This is the first of 5 volumes that cover American History through poetry from the Vikings to WWI.

Librivox volunteers bring you eleven readings of My Doves, by Louisa May Alcott. This was the fortnightly poem for December 21, 2014 - January 4, 2015

"Birds and All Nature" was a monthly publication of the Nature Study Publishing Company of Chicago. It includes short poems and brief descriptions of birds, animals and other natural subjects with accompanying color plates. The magazine was published from 1897-1907 under the various titles, "Birds," "Birds and all Nature," "Nature and Art" and "Birds and Nature." Good listening for anyone with a love of nature!

A LibriVox' Weekly Poetry tribute to Robbie Burns on the upcoming Robbie Burns Day. (January 25) Robert Burns (also known as Robbie Burns, Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as The Bard) was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a light Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland...

Elizabeth Chase Akers Allen was an American author, journalist and poet.

"Birds and All Nature" was a monthly publication of the Nature Study Publishing Company of Chicago. It includes short poems and brief descriptions of birds, animals and other natural subjects with accompanying color plates. The magazine was published from 1897-1907 under the various titles, "Birds," "Birds and all Nature," "Nature and Art" and "Birds and Nature."

Emma Lazarus was an American poet born in New York City. She is best known for "The New Colossus", a sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty placed in 1903.

This poem was published just six weeks after the event, its lines emphasize the valour of the cavalry in bravely carrying out their orders, regardless of the obvious outcome. The Charge of the Light Brigade was a charge of British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. Lord Raglan, overall commander of the British forces, had intended to send the Light Brigade to pursue and harry a retreating Russian artillery battery, a task well-suited to light cavalry...

From John Bunyan's classic, The Pilgrim's Progress, we find the poem To Be a Pilgrim, an inspiring reminder of who we are in Christ. This was the weekly poem for March 8-15, 2015.

Arthur Macy was a Nantucket boy of Quaker extraction. His name alone is evidence of this, for it is safe to say that a Macy, wherever found in the United States, is descended from that sturdy old Quaker who was one of those who bought Nantucket from the Indians, paid them fairly for it, treated them with justice, and lived on friendly terms with them. In many ways Arthur Macy showed that he was a Nantucketer and, at least by descent, a Quaker. He often used phrases peculiar to our island in the sea, and was given, in conversation at least, to similes which smacked of salt water. Almost the last time I saw him he said, "I'm coming round soon for a good long gam."

This poem is taken from A Book of Women’s Verse published in 1921. (

This is a collection of 31 poems read by LibriVox volunteers for May 2015.

Shaikh Sa’di, also known as Saadi Shirazi, the nightingale of Shiraz, as Jami poetically calls this gifted poet, was born at Shiraz, the capital of Persia, near the end of the twelfth century. By turns, a student, a water-carrier, a traveller, a soldier fighting against the Christians in the Crusades, a prisoner employed to dig trenches before Tripoli. and an honored poet in his protracted old age at home, — his varied and severe experience took away all provincial tone, and gave him a facility of speaking to all conditions...

This is a collection of Julia Caroline Dorr's Sonnets, from her collected poems.

James Henry Leigh Hunt, best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist, poet, and writer.

This is a collection of 26 poems read by LibriVox volunteers for January 2016.

Sam Walter Foss was an American librarian and poet. For many years the opening lines from Foss' The Coming American ("Bring me men to match my mountains / Bring me men to match my plains / Men with empires in their purpose / And new eras in their brains") were inscribed on a granite wall at the United States Air Force Academy to inspire cadets and officers, but they were removed in 2003 to harmonize in perception to the Air Force Academy's having become coeducational.

Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career...

A selection of poems in the Lancashire dialect by the foremost exponent of the form. A printer by training, Edwin Waugh left his trade for secretarial work and began his literary career in 1852. His first dialect poem, 'Come whoam to thi' childer and me', was written at the Clarence Hotel, Manchester, on 10 June 1856 and published in the Manchester Examiner the following day. The best known Lancashire dialect poem of its day, it inspired numerous followers whose dialect poetry and prose provided an often nostalgic accompaniment to the sound and fury of the industrial revolution...

Victor James William Patrick Daley was an Australian poet. He was born in Ireland, and was educated at the Christian Brothers at Devonport in England. He arrived in Australia in 1878, and became a freelance journalist and writer in both Melbourne and Sydney. He is notable for becoming the first author in Australia who tried to earn a living from writing alone. In Sydney in 1898, he founded the bohemian Dawn and Dusk Club, which had many notable members such as writer Henry Lawson. He died at Sydney of tuberculosis...

Adela Florence Nicolson (née Cory) was an English poet who wrote under the pseudonym Laurence Hope. Her father was employed in the British army at Lahore and she left for India in 1881 to join her father. In 1901, she published Garden of Kama, which was published a year later in America under the title India's Love Lyrics. She attempted to pass these off as translations of various poets, but this claim soon fell under suspicion. Her poems often used imagery and symbols from the poets of the North-West Frontier of India and the Sufi poets of Persia...

Portion of an article in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, VOL. XXVI July-December, 1829 "The late Earl of Eglinton, a distinguished member of a family not destitute of Celtic blood, and which has even been illustrious honour and patriotic feelings and principles, had a high opinion of the loyalty and bravery of the Canadian Highlanders, and left the following translation of one of their boat songs among his papers, set to music by his own hand."

The editor of the volume Made in the Trenches includes these poignant notes: Corporal Streets, in submitting these sonnets some months ago, wrote: "They express not only my feelings but the feelings of thousands of others who, like myself, are on the verge of departure from England." Cpl. Streets, in a letter accompanying later poems, also wrote: "They were inspired while I was in the trenches, where I have been so busy that I have had little time to polish them. I have tried to picture some thoughts that pass through a man's brain when he dies...

Arthur Hugh Clough (kluf) was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to ground-breaking nurse Florence Nightingale. He was the brother of suffragist Anne Clough, who became principal of Newnham College, Cambridge.

James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets. These poets usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside. "Lowell's poem "The Present Crisis," an early work that addressed the national crisis over slavery leading up to the Civil War, has had an impact in the modern civil rights movement...

James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and best-selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the "Hoosier Poet" and "Children's Poet" for his dialect works and his children's poetry respectively. His poems tended to be humorous or sentimental, and of the approximately one thousand poems that Riley authored, the majority are in dialect. His famous works include "Little Orphant Annie" and "The Raggedy Man".

Joseph Ashby-Sterry was an English poet and novelist. He works include Boudoir Ballads, a collection of poetry, now out of print. This poem is taken from the 1888 edition of The Lazy Minstrel.

This is a collection of 32 poems read in English by volunteers for December 2018.

This is a collection of 35 poems read in English by volunteers for August 2018.

This is a volume of poetry by Rosa Muholland. The poetry in this volume is varied, some read like fairy tales, some have a slightly sinister aspect. All poems share the very skillful execution of the verses, and the beauty of the images they evoke. - Summary by Carolin

This is a collection of 31 poems read by volunteers for April 2016.

This is a collection of 34 poems read by volunteers for July 2017. It includes a longer poem, Parliament of the Birds by Farid ud-Din Attar. Introduction by the reader: This is one of the best-loved classics of Sufi literature. In his own land, Attar is better known than Rumi or Hafiz. Translation is by Edward Fitzgerald, who 160 years ago brought the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam to English-speaking audiences. Lacking governance and beginning to descend into anarchy, the birds come together to agree on leadership...

This is a collection of 38 poems read in English by volunteers for September 2018.

This is a collection of 23 poems read by volunteers for June 2016.

This is a collection of 29 poems read by volunteers for February 2016.

This is a collection of 28 poems read by volunteers for November 2016.

This is a collection of 30 poems read by volunteers for August 2016.

This is the second part of James Russell Lowell's collected poems: the Miscellaneous Poems. This series of poems covers, as the title implies, a wide range of topics, shaped into Lowell's beautiful poetry. - Summary by Carolin