The epic poem Jerusalem was in Blake's own opinion his masterpiece. It is the last of the great prophetic books. Originally produced as an engraved book of 100 pages (only one copy of which was every fully finished in the colouring), the poem develops and unifies many of the themes Blake had been exploring in earlier works. It is a complex and powerful work, full of dramatic imagery and sublime poetry. You might think of it like a poetic version of a Wagner opera. This is poetry as if your life depended on it...

John Dryden published Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem in 1681. It is an elaborate historical allegory using the political situation faced by Kind David (2 Samuel 14-18) to mirror that faced by Charles II. Each monarch had a son whom a high-ranking minister attempted to use against him. James Scott, first Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son, was detected planning a rebellion late in 1681, supposedly instigated by the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was tried for high treason, and it is believed that Dryden wrote the poem in an effort to sway the jury in his trial...

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Persian: رباعیات عمر خیام) is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. A Persian ruba'i is a two-line stanza with two parts (or hemistechs) per line, hence the word "Rubáiyát" (derived from the Arabic root word for "four"), meaning "quatrains". (Introduction by Wikipedia) The three translations by women comprise this collection of recordings of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Aucassin and Nicolette is a medieval romance written in a combination of prose and verse called a “song-story.” Created probably in the early 13th century by an unknown French author, the work deals with the love between the son of a count and a Saracen slave girl who has been converted to Christianity and adopted by a viscount. Since Aucassin’s father is strongly opposed to their marriage, the two lovers must endure imprisonment, flight, separation in foreign lands, and many other ordeals before their ardent love and fierce determination finally bring them back together...

Maritime and metaphysical verse by John Masefield, English poet and author, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death.

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...

In this moving poem, Byron recounts the final, desperate resistance of the Venetians on the day the Ottoman army stormed Acrocorinth: revealing the closing scenes of the conflict through the eyes of Lanciotto - a Venetian renegade fighting for the Ottomans - and Francesca - the beautiful maiden daughter of the governor of the Venetian garrison: Minotti.

The Masque of Anarchy was Shelley's response to the Peterloo massacre at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, where 18 died and hundreds were injured, after Hussars charged into a rally for parliamentary reform. Written in Italy in 1819, the poem was not published until 1832, ten years after Shelley's death. This reading is from the first published edition with the addition of three words that were inserted in full only in later additions ('Eldon' in Stanza IV and 'Bible' and 'Sidmouth' in Stanza VI). The poem is preceded by Leigh Hunt's preface to the 1932 edition and followed by Harry Buxton Forman's 1887 lecture on the poem to the Shelley Society.

In addition to being amusing, recipes written in a poetic form were easy to remember and used as learning tools for the young housekeeper. Many of the poems in this 1912 publication were originally published in Woman's Home Companion, Good Housekeeping Magazine, the Housewife, Table Talk, and the Boston Cooking School Magazine.

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)

Throughout history there have been many creative artists whose fame depends largely on their association with a much greater artist. Such the case of Thomas Shadwell, poet and prolific writer of low brow comedies, who is today most famous as the butt of satire by one of greatest and most influential English poets, John Dryden. Shadwell and Dryden were at first colleagues and collaborators, but later fell out over some sharp divergences of opinion. In particular, Dryden disagreed with Shadwell's high estimation of Ben Jonson, and even more of the latter's claim to be be Jonson's artistic heir...

The first collection by Irish-born poet William Butler Yeats. Many decades before his mysterious and austere Modernist verse earned him a nobel prize, Yeats achieved renown as one of the last major poets in the High Romantic tradition. These poems showcase his Celtic imagination, his love for Irish folk-tales, and his commitment to the Romantic ideal of love.

In the Seven Woods (1904) is Yeats's first twentieth-century poetry collection. Its fourteen poems show him moving steadily away from the decisively Romantic diction of his earlier work. Here we hear a poetic voice that is at once more individual, colloquial and dramatic than previously. In addition, several poems sound a note of bitter lamentation over the marriage in 1903 of Maud Gonne, Yeats's great love and muse, to John MacBride.

Located in a part of Cumbria that was once part of Lancashire, the River Duddon rises in the high fells of the Lake District and flows for 25 miles through varied scenery before disappearing into the sands between Millom and Barrow-in-Furness. Wordsworth’s series of sonnets, inspired by his walks along the river, were written over a period of years, but are arranged so as to follow its downward course from the fells to the sea. Part One of this reading consists of the 33 sonnets and postscript that were first published as a series in 1820...

Lowell Massachusetts was founded in the 1820s as a planned manufacturing center for textiles and is located along the rapids of the Merrimack River, 25 miles northwest of Boston. By the 1850s Lowell had the largest industrial complex in the United States. The textile industry wove cotton produced in the South. In 1860, there were more cotton spindles in Lowell than in all eleven states combined that would form the Confederacy. Mind Amongst the Spindles is a selection of works from the Lowell Offering, a monthly periodical collecting contributed works of poetry and fiction by the female workers of the textile mills...

Richard le Gallienne was an English poet and critic, who, although unfamiliar with the Persian language, had a profound interest in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1897 he published a collection of 211 quatrains, which was based on earlier English translations, in particular the prose version by Justin Huntly McCarthy. A expanded edition, containing fifty additional quatrains was published in 1901, and this has been used for the present recording.

A collection in celebration of 2012 Year of Reading Australia. Readers chose fiction, non fiction and poetry - we only asked that the readings should have some sort of Australian hook. So they can be by an Australian author, or about Australia, or just have a prominent bit of Australianess in the plot. Failing that: even being performed by Australians will do! :D .

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, courage and accomplishments of colored men and women. In that spirit, this recording aims to gives that voice a permanent record. As in the original text, the names of the colored authors are marked with an "x".

An alphabet of historical characters presented in poetical form!In their original form, the contents of this book appeared in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, which newspaper is hereby thanked for the privilege of reproducing this Alphabet

A beautiful collection of pretty little poems.

The Aeneid is the most famous Latin epic poem, written by Virgil in the 1st century BC. The story revolves around the legendary hero Aeneas, a Trojan prince who left behind the ruins of his city and led his fellow citizens 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, while the poem’s second half treats the Trojans’ victorious war upon the Latins. This is the recording of J.W.MacKail's prose translation.

A collection of poems with varying subjects.

Most of the translations of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam have been in verse. However, there have been three notable exceptions to this convention; the French translation by J. B. Nicolas (1867), the English version by Justin Huntly McCarthy (1889) and another English version by Frederick Rolfe (better known as Baron Corvo, the author of Hadrian VII), published in 1903. Charles Blanden (1857 - 1933) belonged to the group known as the Chicago poets, the most famous of which was Carl Sandburg. Unlike his celebrated contemporary...

Part diatribe, part discourse, part sermon and part stand-up comedy, this is Fulke Greville's 114 stanza, verse-poem about religious hypocrisy.

Michael Angelo and Campanella represent widely sundered, though almost contemporaneous, moments in the evolution of the Italian genius. Michael Angelo was essentially an artist, living in the prime of the Renaissance. Campanella was a philosopher, born when the Counter-Reformation was doing all it could to blight the free thought of the sixteenth century; and when the modern spirit of exact enquiry, in a few philosophical martyrs, was opening a new stage for European science. The one devoted all his mental energies to the realisation of beauty: the other strove to ascertain truth...

A collection of short poems on various themes by the author.

Spring through Fall 1921 in Poetry, edited by Harriet Monroe. 2012 is the 100th Anniversary of Poetry magazine.

LibriVox volunteers bring you 9 recordings of Eliza Crossing the River by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for April 27th, 2014.Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was a depiction of life for African Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom. It energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South...

Sir Thomas More is a collaborative Elizabethan play by Anthony Munday and others depicting the life and death of Thomas More. It survives only in a single manuscript, now owned by the British Library. The manuscript is notable because three pages of it are considered to be in the hand of William Shakespeare and for the light it sheds on the collaborative nature of Elizabethan drama and the theatrical censorship of the era. The play dramatizes events in More's life, both real and legendary, in an episodic manner in 17 scenes, unified only by the rise and fall of More's fortunes.

Librivox volunteers bring you 13 readings of Winter Sport, by an unknown author. This was the weekly poem for the week of November 23 - 30, 2014.

Librivox volunteers bring you 15 readings of The Wind and the Moon by George Macdonald. This is the fortnightly poetry project for September 28, 2014.

This is a small volume with short poems about flowers. Listeners may wish to refer to the online text, which includes very neat illustrations.

2019 collection of items with a Christmas theme containing traditional stories, Christmas traditions, Christmas cakes. We hope you will enjoy it.

This is a volume of poetry by newspaperman-poet Harry Lee Marriner, published in 1910. Many of the poems are on the joyous days then, reflecting on childhood and the simpler times, with a measure of nostalgia and pathos, which the author uses to advantage for his poetry. - Summary by Carolin

Helen Hunt Jackson wrote poetry, nonfiction and fiction and was a popular author in her own time. This sonnet sequence reviews the months of the year and demonstrates her poetic talent. - Summary by Newgatenovelist

volunteers bring you 15 recordings of October by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. This was the Weekly Poetry project for October 6, 2019. ------ Dinah Maria Craik was an English novelist and poet. She is best remembered for her novel John Halifax, Gentleman, which presents the ideals of English middle-class life. - Summary by Wikipedia

Sonnets from The Patagonian is a collection of sonnets and the first work published by the short-lived Claire Marie press. Each sonnet is a portrait of someone Evans knows from the Modernist scene just beginning to coalesce in Greenwich Village, and each portrait is dedicated to a completely different acquaintance. What emerges is a clever, irreverent, set of early Modernist in-jokes that look forward to the Dadaist and Surrealist movements that would form in Europe after World War I. Giddy, bizarre and deftly constructed, Sonnets from the Patagonian read like nothing else of its time...

This is a collection of 39 poems read in English by volunteers for November 2019.

volunteers bring you 12 recordings of Weed or Flower by Helen Leah Reed. This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 22, 2019. ------ American teacher and author; known for her children's books, which were entertaining as well as educative, the best remembered being her Brenda series of novels. - Summary by Wikisource

volunteers bring you 14 recordings of Train Window by Lola Ridge. This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 8, 2019. ------ Lola Ridge, born Rose Emily Ridge was an Irish-American anarchist poet and an influential editor of avant-garde, feminist, and Marxist publications. She is best remembered for her long poems and poetic sequences, published in numerous magazines and collected in five books of poetry. - Summary by Wikipedia

volunteers bring you 15 recordings of After A Night Of Rain by Madison Cawein. This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 1, 2019. ------ An ode to September and the changing season. - Summary by David Lawrence

volunteers bring you 11 recordings of The Maid's Lament by Walter Savage Landor. This was the Weekly Poetry project for August 25, 2109. ------ Walter Savage Landor was an English writer, poet, and activist. The critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equaled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament. - Summary by Wikipedia

volunteers bring you 17 recordings of Fruitionless by Ina Coolbrith. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for August 11, 2019. ------ A wistful poem, capturing in a few lines the joy and industry of 3 of natures creations , with the listlessness we humans sometimes feel.

Published in 1921 , "Hail and Farewell" is a collection of poems in honour of alcohol, drunkenness, and all things related.In "The Old Soak", an old codger grumbles and connives to get alcohol in the age of Prohibition. Part is narrative, and part is installments from The Old Soak's papers. “I'm writing a diary. A diary of the past. A kind of gol-dinged autobiography of what me and Old King Booze done before he went into the grave and took one of my feet with him. In just a little while now there won't be any one in this here broad land of ours, speaking of it geographically, that knows what an old-fashioned barroom was like...

volunteers bring you 16 recordings of The Lifting Of The Mist by E. Pauline Johnson. This was the Weekly Poetry project for July 28, 2019. ------ Her education was neither extensive nor elaborate, and embraced neither High School nor College. ... she acquired a wide general knowledge, having been, through childhood and early girlhood, a great reader, especially of poetry. Before she was twelve years old she had read every line of Scott's poems, every line of Longfellow, much of Byron, Shakespeare, and such books as Addison's "Spectator," Foster's Essays and Owen Meredith.

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.

A collection of pieces, both fiction and non-fiction, that have as its subject a word beginning with a specific letter of the English alphabet. Subjects can range from coffee to tea, animals to vampires, law to emotions.

volunteers bring you 16 recordings of Hope by William Dean Howells. This was the Weekly Poetry project for July 7, 2019. ------ A short, vivid seafaring poem that holds out hope for an afterlife, wonderfully crafted by William Dean Howells, an American novelist, literary critic, poet and playwright, nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters". He was particularly known for his tenure as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, as well as for his own prolific writings

A number of what we might call epigrams concerning one's will, determination, spirituality, and other foci of interest. - Summary by KevinS

volunteers bring you 15 recordings of Long I Thought that Knowledge by Walt Whitman. This was the Weekly Poetry project for June 30, 2019. ------ This poem is taken from Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass"

volunteers bring you 25 recordings of The Tom-Cat by Don Marquis. This was the Fortnighty Poetry project for June 23, 2019. ------ A reflection on the tom-cat. - Summary by KevinS

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

volunteers bring you 18 recordings of Inscription For A Stone by William Cowper. This was the Weekly Poetry project for May 12, 2019. ------ INSCRIPTION FOR A STONE Erected at the sowing of a grove of oaks at Chillington, the Seat of T. Giffard, Esq, 1790

This is the story of an intelligent, upright and generous rooster named Chanticleer. We follow his life from birth to death in this story written in verse. The story recounts his adventures during his childhood, his studies and his travels. He becomes a father and grandfather and tries to impart his wisdom to the next generation. - Summary by SweetHome

volunteers bring you recordings of Double Sestina - Ye Goatherd Gods by Phillip Sidney. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for May 5, 2019. ------ Poem is included in the book "Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia" Ye Goatherd Gods" depicts the sorrows of two shepherds who love the same woman. She has left them both, however, and the two shepherds are dejected and heartbroken. They appeal to the gods, to nature, and to the heavens in their angst, and everything they see is altered because of their sorrows...

volunteers bring you12 recordings of The Penitent by Edna St. Vincent Millay. This was the Weekly Poetry project for May 5, 2019. ------ A saucy little poem about a girl with a guilt free conscience! A very prolific poet and playwright, graduate of Vasser, known for her feminist activism, Edna St. Vincent received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award.

volunteers bring you 14 recordings of The Ghosts of Growth by George Parsons Lathrop. This was the Weekly Poetry project for January 20, 2019. ------ The poet describes the beauties of nature after a snow fall, and the result of the mid-day sun.

The prophet Al Mustafa, before leaving the city where he has been living twelve years, stops to address the people. They call out for his words of wisdom on many sides of the human condition, and he addresses them in terms of love and care. He has much to offer from his observations of the people, and he illustrates with images they can relate to. The author, Gibran, was influenced by the Maronites, the Sufis, and the Baha’i. His philosophy, though deist, is primarily aimed at the good within ourselves, and the common-sense ways in which we can unlock it...