LibriVox volunteers bring you 13 recordings of The Wish by Abraham Cowley. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for February 24, 2013. Abraham Cowley (/ˈkuːli/) was a leading English poet in the 16th century.

volunteers bring you 22 recordings of Farewells by Abram Joseph Ryan. This was the Weekly Poetry project for May 26, 2019. ------ Abram Joseph Ryan was an American poet, an active proponent of the Confederate States of America, and a Catholic priest. He has been called the "Poet-Priest of the South" and, less frequently, the "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy." - Summary by Wikipedia

Adam Lindsay Gordon was an Australian poet, jockey and politician.

Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist. She worked prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. She became unhealthy, possibly due to her charity work, and died of tuberculosis at the age of 38. Procter's literary career began when she was a teenager; her poems were primarily published in Charles Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round and later published in book form. Her charity work and her conversion to Roman Catholicism appear to have strongly influenced her poetry, which deals most commonly with such subjects as homelessness, poverty, and fallen women...

This is the third part of a collection of poetry written by English female poets. This part of From Queen's Gardens is a collection of 29 poems by Adelaide Anne Procter. - Summary by Carolin

Her death was tragic. Full of the desire of life she yet was forced to go, leaving her work all unfinished. Her last year was spent in exile at Saranac Lake. From her window she looked down on the graveyard — "Trudeau's Garden," she called it, with grim-gay irony. from the forward to Verse, by Claude Bragdon - Summary by from the forward to Verse,by Claude Bragdon

Aemilia Lanyer's 1611 poem is far more than a retelling of The Passion. It comprises a spirited defense of Eve (and, by extension, all women), elegant praises for her female patrons, a catalogue of virtuous women of the ancient world, and closes with the first "country house" poem written by a woman in English.

LibriVox volunteers bring you 15 recordings of Mis' Smith,/em>, by Albert Paine. This was the Weekly Poetry project for April 7th, 2013.

This is a volume of poetry written by the sisters Albion Fellows Bacon and Annie Fellows Johnston. Both of the sisters reached quite a level of fame in their own right, Ms Bacon primarily as a social reformer and Ms Johnston as an author of children's books. In this volume of poetry, they bring their two sets of skills together to write beautiful verses. - Summary by Carolin

Though later known for his essays and novels, Aldous Huxley started his writing career as a poet. Published in 1918, The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems is his third compilation of poetry. The volume begins with "The Defeat of Youth", a sequence of twenty-two sonnets that explores irreconcilability of the ideal and the disappointing reality. Jerome Meckier called it “the century’s most successful sonnet sequence, better than Auden’s or Edna St. Vincent Millay’s.” In the rest of the volume, Huxley continues to explore themes started in The Burning Wheel, his first volume of poetry, including vision, blindness, and other contrasts...

A series of six volumes of Wheels anthologies was produced by members of the Sitwell family between 1916 and 1922. The second volume, published in 1917, contains poems by the Sitwells and also Aldous Huxley, among others. - Summary by Algy Pug

Alexander Hamilton Laidlaw was born in Scotland. He graduated from Philadelphia Central High School in 1845. He practiced medicine from 1856-1905 and published some works including Soldier Songs and Love Songs, 1898, from which our Fortnightly Poem is taken.

Pope’s Essay on Man, a masterpiece of concise summary in itself, can fairly be summed up as an optimistic enquiry into mankind’s place in the vast Chain of Being. Each of the poem’s four Epistles takes a different perspective, presenting Man in relation to the universe, as individual, in society and, finally, tracing his prospects for achieving the goal of happiness. In choosing stately rhyming couplets to explore his theme, Pope sometimes becomes obscure through compressing his language overmuch...

An Essay on Criticism was the first major poem written by the English writer Alexander Pope (1688-1744). However, despite the title, the poem is not as much an original analysis as it is a compilation of Pope’s various literary opinions. A reading of the poem makes it clear that he is addressing not so much the ingenuous reader as the intending writer. It is written in a type of rhyming verse called heroic couplets.

The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany in May 1712 in two cantos (334 lines), but then revised, expanded and reissued under Pope's name on March 2, 1714, in a much-expanded 5-canto version (794 lines). The final form was available in 1717 with the addition of Clarissa's speech on good humour. The poem satirizes a petty squabble by comparing it to the epic world of the gods. It was based on an incident recounted by Pope's friend, John Caryll...

Eugene Onéguine is a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes (so-called superfluous men). It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. The first complete edition was published in 1833, and the currently accepted version is based on the 1837 publication.Almost the entire work is made up of 389 stanzas of iambic tetrameter with the unusual rhyme scheme "AbAbCCddEffEgg", where the uppercase letters represent feminine rhymes while the lowercase letters represent masculine rhymes...

volunteers bring you 17 recordings of A Winter Evening by Alexander Pushkin, translated by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for February 13, 2022. ----- Pushkin is a well-known Russian author and poet. Bianchi, the translator, was the niece of Emily Dickinson and is best known as an editor of Dickinson's poems. - Summary by TriciaG

Not all of the English poets laureate have been the greatest masters of verse. Alfred Austin, who assumed this post after Alfred Lord Tennyson, was one of the less distinguished - if more prolific - late Victorian poets. In modern times, his verse has become celebrated not for its smooth earnestness, but rather for the occasional howlers it contains. A notable example is this song from his pastoral epic Fortunatus the Pessimist, the final couplet of which is a popular favourite in anthologies of bad verse. - Summary by Algy Pug

If you love and cherish old English nursery rhymes and have fond memories of your early childhood years, Our Old Nursery Rhymes by Alfred Moffat published in 1911 is indeed the little book for you! Or as a parent, if you'd like your own children to share the magic, this book provides them all. One of the most appealing aspects of this charming book is that the rhymes are all set to music and if you're musically inclined, you can certainly keep yourself and your children entertained by playing these pretty tunes...

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.

In Memoriam is Tennyson’s elegiac tribute to his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died in 1833 at the age of 22. Tennyson wrote this long poem over 17 years as a chronicle of his mourning process. The poem became a favorite of Queen Victoria when she was grieving for her husband, and was one of the most popular and artistically influential poems of the Victorian period.

Idylls of the King, published between 1856 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom. The whole work recounts Arthur's attempt and failure to lift up mankind and create a perfect kingdom, from his coming to power to his death at the hands of the traitor Mordred. Individual poems detail the deeds of various knights, including Lancelot, Geraint, Galahad, and Balin and Balan, and also Merlin and the Lady of the Lake.

The Princess is a serio-comic blank verse narrative poem, written by Alfred Tennyson, published in 1847. The poem tells the story of an heroic princess who forswears the world of men and founds a women's university where men are forbidden to enter. The prince to whom she was betrothed in infancy enters the university with two friends, disguised as women students. They are discovered and flee, but eventually they fight a battle for the princess's hand.

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...

A roundel (not to be confused with the rondel) is a form of verse used in English language poetry devised by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909). It is a variation of the French rondeau form. It makes use of refrains, repeated according to a certain stylized pattern. A roundel consists of nine lines each having the same number of syllables, plus a refrain after the third line and after the last line. The refrain must be identical with the beginning of the first line: it may be a half-line, and rhymes with the second line...

Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell was an English writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet. At the end of the 19th century, in conjunction with uprisings against the British (among them the Indians', the Zulus', the Boxer Rebellion, and the Muslim revolt led by Muhammad Ahmed in the Sudan), many European scholars, writers, and artists, began to question Europe's colonial imperialism. This led the Meynells and others in their circle to speak out for the oppressed. Alice Meynell was a vice-president of the Women Writers' Suffrage League, founded by Cicely Hamilton and active 1908–19.

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.

Aline Murray Kilmer , was an American poet, children's book author, and essayist, and the wife and widow of poet and journalist Joyce Kilmer . Aline attended the Rutgers College Preparatory School with her husband, Alfred Joyce Kilmer and married him soon after his graduation from Columbia University in 1908. In their short marriage, lasting 10 years, her husband had achieved fame as a poet, literary critic and among Catholic circles as America's most prominent Catholic writer. After his death in World War I, Aline began publishing her own poetry and a few children's books. Today, her work is largely forgotten. - Summary by Wikipedia

Aline Murray Kilmer , was an American poet, children's book author, and essayist, and the wife and widow of poet and journalist Joyce Kilmer . Aline attended the Rutgers College Preparatory School with her husband, Alfred Joyce Kilmer and married him soon after his graduation from Columbia University in 1908. In their short marriage, lasting 10 years, her husband had achieved fame as a poet, literary critic and among Catholic circles as America's most prominent Catholic writer. After his death in World War I, Aline began publishing her own poetry and a few children's books. Today, her work is largely forgotten. - Summary by Wikipedia

This is a volume of poetry by American poet Aline Murray Kilmer, widow of the poet Joyce Kilmer. These poems have been published several years after Joyce Kilmer's death in 1918 while he was deployed in France, and their daughter Rose's death in 1917. Many of the poems in this collection thus also center around a motive of grief and loss, and set these emotions into poetry of heartbreaking beauty. - Summary by Carolin

LibriVox volunteers bring you 8 recordings of An Interpretation by Ambrose Bierce. This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 22, 2013.

This is a volume of poetry by the influential Lebanese American author Ameen Rihani. In these poems, the author playfully introduces the American public of the early 1920's to the environment in which he grew up, embellishing the poems with folklore and fairy tale romance. - Summary by Carolin

Amy Levy was a British poet and novelist who is celebrated for her feminist positions and her engagement with homosexual romance during the Victorian era. Levy wrote stories, essays, and poems for periodicals, some popular and others literary. Her writing career began early; her poem "Ida Grey" appearing in the journal, The Pelican, when she was only fourteen. Her final book of poems, A London Plane-Tree And Other Verse (1889), contains lyrics that are among the first to show the influence of French symbolism. (Introduction excerpted from Wikipedia)

This is a collection of lyrical poems, sonnets and verses for children by Amy Lowell."For quaint pictorial exactitude and bizarrerie of color these poems remind one of Flemish masters and Dutch tulip gardens; again, they are fine and fantastic, like Venetian glass; and they are all curiously flooded with the moonlight of dreams. . . . Miss Lowell has a remarkable gift of what one might call the dramatic-decorative. Her decorative imagery is intensely dramatic, and her dramatic pictures are in themselves vivid and fantastic decorations." (Richard Le Gallienne, 'New York Times Book Review', 1916)

This is a collection of long poems and short stories by Amy Lowell.

volunteers bring you 19 recordings of Ode 7 by Anacreon, translated by Sir Thomas Moore. This was the Weekly Poetry project for August 14, 2022. ----- The more things change, the more they stay the same. Written sometime around 500 BC, this little poem expresses the desire to live life to the fullest with the time one has left. Here's to gray hair and the autumn of one's life! - Summary by TriciaG

A collection of poems by Australian poet Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson, picturesque glimpses into life in the Bush. From the preface: “A number of these verses are now published for the first time, most of the others were written for and appeared in ‘The Bulletin’ (Sydney, N.S.W.), and are therefore already widely known to readers in Australasia.”

In 1892, two of Australia's best poets came up with a scheme to make some money. They arranged to have an argument in the Weekly Bulletin, and since they were being paid by the word, this let them fire back and forth, being sent beer money with each salvo. A couple of other poets also joined in, and their work is seminal to the development of the Bush ethos in Australia. The first eight files are the original form of the poems, and the second eight are later republications by the authors, in their own collections.

volunteers bring you 15 recordings of Our Mat by A. B. Paterson. This was the Weekly Poetry project for July 14, 2019. ------ Banjo Paterson's speculations on a piece of prison craft. This poem references The Darlinghurst Gaol, a former Australian prison located in Darlinghurst, New South Wales. Australian poet Henry Lawson spent time incarcerated there during some of the turbulent years of his life and described the gaol as Starvinghurst Gaol due to meagre rations given to the inmates. It was closed in 1914 and has subsequently been repurposed to house the National Art School.

volunteers bring you 17 recordings of Not on It by Andrew Barton Paterson. This was the Weekly Poetry project for April 12, 2020. ------ This Weekly Poem is from the original collection SALTBUSH BILL, J.P., AND OTHER VERSES, which includes 43 poems by the author that are reprinted from various sources. The book formed part of the publisher's series of "Pocket Editions for the Trenches", designed to fit a serviceman's coat pocket.

volunteers bring you 12 recordings of A Mountain Station by Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for April 4, 2021. ------ Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, CBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, his "Waltzing Matilda" is regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem. This poem is taken from The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses by Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson. - Summary by Wikipedia

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 anthology poetry, gathered by Andrew Lang and originally published in 1891, is read by four voices, Larry Wilson, Ciufi Galeazzi, Lynette Caulkins and J. Thurgood.

Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton. His poems range from the love-song "To His Coy Mistress", to evocations of an aristocratic country house and garden in "Upon Appleton House" and "The Garden", the political address "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland", and the later personal and political satires "Flecknoe" and "The Character of Holland". - Summary by Wikipedia

An early figure in the birth of poetry in industrial Manchester, Ann Hawkshaw published three collections and another was circulated privately. Her first collection. published in Manchester and London in 1842, begins with an epic poem, Dionysius the Areopagite. Based on the New Testament story of the conversion of Dionysius by St Paul, much of the poem centres on the consequences of Dionysius' conversion for his betrothed, Myra, and her sister, Corrina. The collection also includes two of Hawkshaw's most important works, The Past and The Future, and a number of shorter poems on themes of history, loss and faith.

Published in 1847, five years after her epic poem, 'Dionysus the Areopagite', 'Poems For My Children' was Ann Hawkshaw's second collection of poetry. The poems are dedicated to her six children and many are written in an intimate conversational style. 'Ada', the final poem in the collection, is a memorial for her second child, who had died of hydrocephalus shortly before her fifth birthday. Five historical poems, set in the times of the Druids, the Romans the Saxons, the Normans and the Crusades, punctuate the collection and anticipate her later collection, 'Sonnets on Anglo-Saxon History'.

In Edwy, Ann Radcliffe gives us a delightful piece of poetic moonshine, whose eponymous hero seeks assistance from the world of faerie in order to spy on his girlfriend, Aura, and see if she really loves him. He does this by venturing unseen into Windsor Forest at night to trap the love-fay, Eda, who, once spellbound, must reveal all and let him remotely view Aura's activities by means of a magic mirror cut from crystal. In addition to this early form of cyberstalking, Edwy, on his night-journey into the forest gets to witness a royal procession of the Fairie Queen, followed by midnight revels of elves and spirits...

volunteers bring you 16 recordings of A Mother's Song by Anna Hempstead Branch. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for May 3, 2020. ------ A tribute to Mothers everywhere. Taken from The shoes that danced, and other poems by Anna Hempstead Branch, - Summary by David Lawrence

Anna Katharine Green is now best-known for her popular mystery and detective stories, but she also wrote some excellent poetry.

Anna Katharine Green was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories. Green has been called "the mother of the detective novel". - Summary by Wikipedia

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, was an English poet, the third child of Sir William Kingsmill of Sydmonton Court and his wife, Anne Haslewood. She was well-educated as her family believed in good education for girls as well as for boys. In her works Finch drew upon her own observations and experiences, demonstrating an insightful awareness of the social mores and political climate of her era. But she also artfully recorded her private thoughts, which could be joyful or despairing, playful or despondent. The poems also revealed her highly developed spiritual side.

volunteers bring you 24 recordings of Thoughts in a Library by Anne Lynch Botta. This was the Weekly Poetry project for March 28, 2021. ------ Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta was an American poet, writer, teacher and socialite whose home was the central gathering place of the literary elite of her era. - Summary by Wikipedia

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.

A heartwarming collection of nursery rhymes that will take you back to your childhood!

In this saga, the events that led to Eirik the Red’s banishment to Greenland are chronicled, as well as Leif Eirikson’s discovery of Vinland the Good (a place where wheat and grapes grew naturally), after his longboat was blown off-course. By geographical details, this place is surmised to be present-day Newfoundland, and is likely the first European discovery of the American mainland, some five centuries before Christopher Columbus’s journey.

The Song of Roland is an epic poem, originally sung in Old French. It tells the story of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778. This is an English translation. Translated by Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff.