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Lyrical Ballads (1798)

Wordsworth, William
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)
Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the rest in verse). The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a frame tale and told by a group of pilgrims on their way from Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.

The themes of the tales vary, and include topics such as courtly love, treachery, and avarice. The genres also vary, and include romance, Breton lai, sermon, beast fable, and fabliau. The characters, introduced in the General Prologue of the book, tell tales of great cultural relevance.
The version read here was edited by D. Laing Purves (1838-1873) “for popular perusal” and the language is mostly updated.
Shakespeare's Sonnets

William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s sonnets comprise a collection of 154 poems in sonnet form that deal with such themes as love, beauty, politics, and mortality.
Shakespeare's Sonnets (version 2)

William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's Sonnets, or simply The Sonnets, comprise a collection of 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare that deal with such themes as love, beauty, politics, and mortality. The poems were probably written over a period of several years.
Shakespeare's Sonnets (version 3)

William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s Sonnets, or simply The Sonnets, comprise a collection of 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare that deal with such themes as love, beauty, politics, and mortality. The poems were probably written over a period of several years.
Shakespeare's Sonnets (version 3)

William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s Sonnets, or simply The Sonnets, comprise a collection of 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare that deal with such themes as love, beauty, politics, and mortality. The poems were probably written over a period of several years.
Shakespeare's Sonnets (version 4)

William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's sequence of 154 sonnets deals with such themes as love, time, death, immortality, lust, and sex. The poems follow but also depart from the Petrarchan tradition of sonnets written by a frustrated male lover to an unattainable idealized female beloved. Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to both male and female lovers: the androgynous "young man" and the alluring yet dangerously sexual "dark lady."
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Shakespeare's Sonnets (version 4)

William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's sequence of 154 sonnets deals with such themes as love, time, death, immortality, lust, and sex. The poems follow but also depart from the Petrarchan tradition of sonnets written by a frustrated male lover to an unattainable idealized female beloved. Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to both male and female lovers: the androgynous "young man" and the alluring yet dangerously sexual "dark lady."
Argonautica

Apollonius Rhodius
The story of how Jason and a group of famous heroes of Greece took to sea in the Argos has been told many times, before and after Apollonius of Rhodes, wrote his Argonautica, in the 3rd century b.C.. It is not only the oldest full version of the tale to arrive to our days, but also the only extant example of Hellenistic epic. This was already a popular myth by the times of Apollonius, who makes the story of how Jason and the Argonauts sail to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, and have to go through a lot of adventures to fulfill their task, a mix of simple narrative and scholarly catalog. The Argonautica had a deep impact on European literature as a whole.
Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson

Sæmund Sigfusson
The most complete set of the epic Norse eddas, or poems. It contains in beautiful verse the pagan beliefs of the Old Norse. Luckily in this work both the Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson are presented, and you may find a version of the Nibelunglied that you aren't as familiar with. Numerous authors including Tolkien and Martin have acknowledge their debt to and appreciation for these traditional works.
On the Nature of Things (Leonard translation)

Titus Lucretius Carus
On the Nature of Things, written in the first century BCE by Titus Lucretius Carus, is one of the principle expositions on Epicurean philosophy and science to have survived from antiquity. Far from being a dry treatise on the many topics it covers, the original Latin version (entitled De Rerum Natura) was written in the form of an extended poem in hexameter, with a beauty of style that was admired and emulated by his successors, including Ovid and Cicero. The version read here is an English verse translation written by William Ellery Leonard. Although Leonard penned his version in the early twentieth century, he chose to adhere to both the vocabulary and meter (alternating between pentameter and hexameter) of Elizabethan-era poetry.

While the six untitled books that comprise On the Nature of Things delve into a broad range of subjects, including the physical nature of the universe, the workings of the human mind and body, and the natural history of the Earth, Lucretius repeatedly asserts throughout the work that his chief purpose is to provide the reader with a means to escape the "darkness of the mind" imposed by superstition and ignorance. To this end he offers us his enlightening verses, that through them might be revealed to us "nature's aspect, and her laws".
Spoon River Anthology

Edgar Lee Masters
This is a collection of poems, in the form of an entire community speaking from beyond the grave about their lives, and, in some cases, gossiping about their neighbors' lives. It's interesting to hear how other people perceive a particular character, and how that character responds.
Idylls of the King

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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.
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley was the first African-American to publish a book of poetry in 1773. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at age seven, and bought by a wealthy Massachusetts family who taught her to read and write. Her extraordinary literary gifts led to the publication of her "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," and to her eventual emancipation by her owners. Although some of the poems demonstrate an apparent acceptance of the racist values of the white slave-owning classes (which viewed Africans as savage), Wheatley's considerable talents simultaneously contradicted these stereotypes.
Paradise Lost (version 2)

John Milton
As Vergil had surpassed Homer by adapting the epic form to celebrate the origin of the author’s nation, Milton developed it yet further to recount the origin of the human race itself and, in particular, the origin of and the remedy for evil; this is what he refers to as “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.”

After a statement of its purpose, the poem plunges, like its epic predecessors, into the midst of the action, shockingly bringing to the front the traditional visit to the underworld, for Satan’s malice is the mainspring of the negative action. But at the center of the poem lies the triumph by the Son of God over the angelic rebels, which counteracts Satan’s evil design. To preview this pattern, the fallen angels’ council in hell is counterbalanced by a council in heaven, in which the Son offers himself as a scapegoat for mankind long before the original sin has been committed.

With this background, the narrator introduces us to Eden and our “Grand Parents.” Satan is detected spying on them and is expelled from the garden, after which God sends an angel to tutor Adam and Eve in the history of the heavenly war that has led to the present situation. At Adam's request, the heavenly guest then recounts the creation of the visible world, explaining also the proper nature of development, whereby all things proceed from lower to higher by refining that which nourishes them.

Satan, however, returning in the form of a snake, offers Eve an evolutionary shortcut in the form of a magical food capable of endowing her with super powers. He claims it has conferred on him both reason and speech. Since Eve is suffering at the moment from a fancied slight to her moral strength, she allows herself to forget her recent lesson and yields to this temptation. Adam, unable to imagine life without Eve (and failing to explore alternatives to sin), accepts the fruit from her and eats as well.

Satan’s triumph is short-lived, for although hell and the world of mankind are now linked by a broad highway, he and his followers are humiliated in hell by being turned involuntarily into snakes every year.

Whatever their reasons, both Adam and Eve have disobeyed their Maker’s sole command, and both are condemned to mortality and expulsion from the garden, but before they leave they are vouchsafed another history lesson, this time of the world to come: the progress of sin, the Savior’s coming, and the growth of the church.

Pronunciation: Although a Cambridge M.A., Milton was born and raised in Cheapside, within earshot of the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow, which would make him a Cockney, and the educated dialect which he spoke more nearly resembled the speech of modern Ireland or Ohio than of today's London. Therefore no British accent has been used for this recording, with rare exceptions like making shone rhyme with gone, as Milton's spelling shon specifies. For the most part, modern pronunciation has been employed, as Milton would doubtless have preferred, being so self-consciously avant garde as, for example, to require by his spelling that participles be clipped (e.g., despis'd, rang'd, stretcht) rather than given the syllabic -ed ending. However, he was equally firm about specifying personal preferences that have not survived in standard English on either side of the Atlantic, such as hunderd, heighth, sate (for sat), and elisions like th'ocean. Although blind, he meticulously checked the proofs of his poems and sent his publisher lists of errata with spelling corrections like these. He even distinguished between their and thir, me and mee. Wherever possible these distinctions have been respected. Research has also determined that he probably gave long vowels to the -able suffix and to the syllable -ube in cherube, but since there is little to be gained by honoring such idiosyncracies, they have not been consistently preserved. On the other hand, metrical considerations demand pronunciations such as SUpreme, blasPHEmous, REcepTAcle, and even ACcepTAble and unACcepTAble. Yet, even where corroborative evidence can be found in Shakespeare or elsewhere, such bizarre pronunciations have been kept to a minimum if the meter can be preserved without deviating from modern pronunciation (TRIumph has generally been preferred to triUMPH and inVISible to INviSIble).

The Text: Because the Rev. H. C. Beeching, editor of the volume, was sensitive to the importance of Milton's spelling and apostrophes, his text provides ample support for the pronunciations employed in this reading. However, the reader is encouraged to pay attention to the notes at the end of each book, to which Beeching has consigned some of Milton's maturest artistic decisions.

(Thomas Copeland)
Manfred

Byron, George Gordon, Lord
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.
Complaint; or Night Thoughts

Edward Young
A book-length poem, often associated with the Graveyard School of poetry, musing upon life and death.
Goblin Market and Other Poems

Rossetti, Christina G.
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.
Song of Hiawatha, The

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
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.
Poems of Sappho: An Interpretative Rendition into English

Sappho
Who shall strike the wax of mystery from those priceless amphoræ, and give to the unsophisticated nostrils of the average reader the ravishing bouquet of wine pressed in a garden in Mitylene, twenty-five centuries ago? - Maurice Thompson

This is a collection of the poetry of Sappho, in a "rather creative translation" by American poet John Myers O'Hara.
Love Poems and Others

D. H. Lawrence
This is a collection of poems by DH Lawrence. Most of the poems concern love and neighboring emotions, but some poems also concern other themes.
Prelude

William Wordsworth
Among monuments of narrative poetry, The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind, by William Wordsworth, occupies a unique place. Wordsworth published the first version of the poem in 1798, but continued to work on it for the rest of his life. The final version, which is the subject of this recording, was published posthumously in 1850, by Wordworth’s widow, Mary.

The Prelude is the first major narrative poem in European literature which deals solely with the spiritual journey of the author. In this respect the only predecessor to which it can be compared in Dante’s Divine Comedy, which is similarly a journey from personal confusion to certitude, from ignorance to realization. However, Dante starts his journey at the age of 35, and, through a lengthy rite of passage, involving both moral and intellectual purification, arrives at a state of illumination that he is not really able to describe. In The Prelude, on the other hand, illumination appears as the background on which the story is inscribed. Wordsworth is really no wiser at the end of his journey than he was at the start, but appears more accepting of the inexorable and sometimes bewildering fluctuations in the flow of human life. Despite Wordsworth’s occasional graceful genuflection to Providence, the poem has a secularity which would have been anathema to a writer like Dante, ensconced in the theocratic fastness of the Middle Ages.

The tone of the Prelude is gentle and reflective. Almost completely absent are the crashing cadences of narrative poems like the Aeneid and Paradise Lost, and there is nothing to match the terrible and multifarious griefs endured by so many characters in Dante’s Inferno. Wordsworth led an unheroic life, made remarkable by intensity of observation rather than incident. This is not to suggest that Wordsworth was unfamiliar with either grief or difficulty, but rather that he could accommodate such troubles in his view of life, which seems never to have quite lost its lustre.

The Prelude may be considered as Wordsworth’s crowning achievement, and one not really matched by any other poet. Despite the poem’s intractably self-referential nature, Wordsworth does not come across as either vain or tedious. The avoidance of tedium is largely due to his incomparable versification, which is a shining example of “the art which conceals art.” Nor are we tempted to see Wordsworth as unduly self-centred, because he communicates the potential glory of everyday events in a way that the reader (or listener) is drawn to share them. A hundred years before T.S.Eliot Wordsworth had arrived “'where we started “ and had “known that place for the first time.”
Trees and Other Poems

Kilmer, Joyce
"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.
Fables of La Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de la Fontaine's fables were very well-known all over Europe during his life, and are now slowly being rediscovered. This edition contains 240 fables or fairy tales and a biography of Jean de la Fontaine and Aesop, containing the most well-known fables in existence, as well as some lesser-known fables and stories. Walter Thornbury's translation furthermore sets the fables into memorable rhymes.
Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times

Alice Duer Miller
A collection of poetry and some other short works by suffragist Alice Duer MIller. Many of these satirical works were first published in the New York Times. The work consists of five sections: Treacherous Texts, Campaign Material (For Both Sides), Women's Sphere, A Masque of Teachers, and The Unconscious Suffragists.
Selected Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell

Brontë sisters
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)
Poems: Series One

Emily Dickinson
Renowned poet Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) wrote many many poems. This collection, "Poems: Series One", presents the first installment of the complete poetic works of Miss Emily Dickinson. It is broken into four parts: Life, Love, Nature, and Time and Eternity.

The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called "the Poetry of the Portfolio,"--something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind. The poetry found here is then entirely honest, and indicative of the authors true feelings.
Jerusalem Delivered

Torquato Tasso
The First Crusade provides the backdrop for a rich tapestry of political machinations, military conflicts, martial rivalries, and love stories, some of which are complicated by differences in religion. The supernatural plays a major role in the action. Partly on this account, and partly because of the multilayered, intertwined plots, the poem met with considerable contemporary criticism, so Tasso revised it radically and published the revision under a new name, La Gerusalemme Conquistata, or "Jerusalem Conquered," which has remained virtually unread, a warning to authors who pay attention to the critics.

The original poem influenced Edmund Spenser, whose unfinished epic, The Faerie Queene, is still more complicated in plot than Tasso's poem and, being an allegory, affords the supernatural an even greater share in the action. In Milton's Paradise Lost, the council in hell (first half of Book II) owes much to Tasso's similar scene in Book IV. (Someone with sufficient background in Old English might profitably compare the tirade of Satan in Book IV to the remarkably similar speech of Satan in the Anglo-Saxon Genesis.) Moreover, Milton's decision to write in English rather than in Latin, then the language of international discourse, was due in part to his visit to Tasso's patron, Giovanni Battista Manso, who advised him as he had advised Torquato Tasso before him, to dignify his native language by employing his talents in bold defiance of custom and precedent. Had Petrarch had the benefit of Manso's advice, his great epic, The Africa, might now eclipse his off-hour doodlings, the sonnets about Laura.

The text is the Gutenberg Project's version, corrected in certain places by consulting editions, also in the public domain, published in 1749, 1844, 1845, and 1901; A Dictionary of the Italian and English Languages, by Joseph Baretti (Venice, 1795); The Oxford English Dictionary; and an edition of La Gerusaleme liberata itself (Paris: Victor Masson, 1836).
Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England

Various
This traditional, and, for the most part, unprinted literature,—cherished in remote villages, resisting everywhere the invasion of modern namby-pamby verse and jaunty melody, and possessing, in an historical point of view, especial value as a faithful record of the feeling, usages, and modes of life of the rural population,—had been almost wholly passed over amongst the antiquarian revivals which constitute one of the distinguishing features of the present age. While attention was successfully drawn to other forms of our early poetry, this peasant minstrelsy was scarcely touched, and might be considered unexplored ground. There was great difficulty in collecting materials which lay scattered so widely, and which could be procured in their genuine simplicity only from the people amongst whom they originated, and with whom they are as ‘familiar as household words.’
Poems 1817

John Keats
Early poems of this famous English lyric poet, in which he openly expresses indebtedness to, and reverence for, his poetic predecessors, especially Spenser, into whose chivalric world he boldly ventures; and also for Milton, and the classic poets. There are also glimpses of his personal, family and political relationships. These poems are of medium length and often pastoral and contemplative in nature with many classical references. His lyric genius and love for humanity are clearly displayed.( Peter Tucker)
Poems

Adam Lindsay Gordon
This is a volume of poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon, 'British-born Australian Steeple-Chase Rider and Poet'.

"The poems of Gordon have an interest beyond the mere personal one which his friends attach to his name. Written, as they were, at odd times and leisure moments of a stirring and adventurous life, it is not to be wondered at if they are unequal or unfinished. The astonishment of those who knew the man, and can gauge the capacity of this city [Melbourne] to foster poetic instinct, is that such work was ever produced here at all. Intensely nervous, and feeling much of that shame at the exercise of the higher intelligence which besets those who are known to be renowned in field sports, Gordon produced his poems shyly, scribbled them on scraps of paper, and sent them anonymously to magazines. It was not until he discovered one morning that everybody knew a couplet or two of "How we Beat the Favourite" that he consented to forego his anonymity and appear in the unsuspected character of a versemaker. The success of his republished "collected" poems gave him courage, and the unreserved praise which greeted "Bush Ballads" should have urged him to forget or to conquer those evil promptings which, unhappily, brought about his untimely death.'
Sea Garden

Hilda Doolittle
This is a collection of poems by Hilda Doolittle about topics relating to the ocean, nature, or both. It contains vivid and descriptive language to convey a wide range of emotions.
Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, The

Brooke, Rupert
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".
Evangeline

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Evangeline is one of Longfellow’s most popular poems and was once a great favorite with the American people. For many years almost every school child studied this poem during the middle school years. Although the decline of the reputation of the once-idolized poet has also brought neglect to this classic, it is still a very touching and expertly written work of art. It is based upon the tragic expulsion of the French settlers from Acadia (located in the Canadian maritime provinces) during the French & Indian War (1754-1763). Many Acadians died as a result of their exile, and many families were separated, including the heroine of this poem and her betrothed. Although she is a fictional character, statues of her and other memorials exist in Nova Scotia and other places now inhabited by descendants of the Acadians, later frequently known as “Cajuns.”
Freedmen's Book, The

Child, Lydia Maria
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.
Pearl (Jewett translation)

The Gawain Poet
Written in the 14th century by the Gawain poet, 'Pearl' is an elegiac poem reflecting on the death of a young daughter, pictured as a pearl lost in a garden. It is considered a masterpiece of Middle English verse, incorporating both the older tradition of alliterative poetry as well as rhyme, centered around the development of an intricately structured image. Sophie Jewett's translation from the Northern dialect of the original renders much of the poem's liveliness and beauty accessible to modern readers, whilst encouraging them to pursue their reading further, to read the original itself.

This recording is dedicated to the memory of Pearl Jean Shearman, 1914-2012.
Poems

John Clare
John Clare was a working-class English poet, best known for his poetic descriptions of the English Countryside. He is also one of the few popular poets of the 19th century, who, after being largely forgotten for years after their deaths, is being rediscovered in our time. This is a selection of John Clare's poems, suitable as an introduction into his work for those who do not know him. Readers who already did know Clare may like to (re-)discover poems that are not quite as well-known today.
Poems

Francis Thompson
This is the first volume of poems published by the English poet Francis Thompson. It also includes his most famous poem, The Hound of Heaven.
Charmides, and Other Poems

Oscar Wilde
This is a volume of poetry by Oscar Wilde, containing some of his rather famous longer poetry in the first part, and a section of sonnets in the second part of the book.
Mahabharata by Vyasa: The epic of ancient India condensed into English verse, The

Romesh C Dutt
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).
Wit and Humor of America, Vol 05

Various
The Wit and Humor of America is a 10 volume series. In this, the fifth volume, 43 short stories and poems have been gathered from 32 authors. This volume is sure to delight listeners.
Enamels and Cameos and other Poems

Théophile Gautier
This is a volume of poetry by French poet Theophile Gautier, translated by Agnes Lee. Enamels and Cameos was published when Gautier was touring the Middle East, is considered his supreme poetic achievement.
Poetical Works of Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood
This is a collection of Thomas Hood's poems. Hood was an eminent British poet, regarded in particular for his humorous poetry, as well as his weird and fantastic poems. As William Michael Rossetti writes in his biographical sketch of Hood, "A man of such a faculty and such a habit of work could scarcely, in all instances, keep himself within the bounds of good taste - a term which people are far too ready to introduce into serious discussions, for the purpose of casting disparagement upon some work which transcends the ordinary standards of appreciation, but a term nevertheless which has its important meaning and its true place. Hood is too often like a man grinning awry, or interlarding serious and beautiful discourse with a nod, a wink, or a leer, neither requisite nor convenient as auxiliaries to his speech: and to do either of these things is to fail in perfect taste. Sometimes, not very often, we are allowed to reach the close of a poem of his without having our attention jogged and called off by a single interpolation of this kind; and then we feel unalloyed—what we constantly feel also even under the contrary conditions—how exquisite a poetic sense and how choice a cunning of hand were his. On the whole, we can pronounce Hood the finest English poet between the generation of Shelley and the generation of Tennyson."
Drake

Noyes, Alfred
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.
Drake

Noyes, Alfred
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.
Birds, Vol. I, No 4, April 1897

Various
Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography was a monthly publication of the Nature Study Publishing Company of Chicago. It includes short poems, anecdotes and factual descriptions of birds 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." Later issues were expanded to include animals, plants, etc
Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella

Michelangelo Buonarroti
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. The one clung to Ficino's dream of Platonising Christianity: the other constructed for himself a new theology, founded on the conception of God immanent in nature. Michael Angelo expressed the aspirations of a solitary life dedicated to the service of art, at a time when art received the suffrage and the admiration of all Italy. Campanella gave utterance to a spirit, exiled and isolated, misunderstood by those with whom he lived, at a moment when philosophy was hunted down as heresy and imprisoned as treason to the public weal.The marks of this difference in the external and internal circumstances of the two poets might be multiplied indefinitely. Yet they had much in common. Both stood above their age, and in a sense aloof from it. Both approached poetry in the spirit of thinkers bent upon extricating themselves from the trivialities of contemporary literature. The sonnets of both alike are contributions to philosophical poetry in an age when the Italians had lost their ancient manliness and energy. Both were united by the ties of study and affection to the greatest singer of their nation, Dante, at a time when Petrarch, thrice diluted and emasculated, was the Phoebus of academies and coteries.

This common antagonism to the degenerate genius of Italian literature is the link which binds Michael Angelo, the veteran giant of the Renaissance, to Campanella, the audacious Titan of the modern age.
Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella

Michelangelo Buonarroti
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. The one clung to Ficino's dream of Platonising Christianity: the other constructed for himself a new theology, founded on the conception of God immanent in nature. Michael Angelo expressed the aspirations of a solitary life dedicated to the service of art, at a time when art received the suffrage and the admiration of all Italy. Campanella gave utterance to a spirit, exiled and isolated, misunderstood by those with whom he lived, at a moment when philosophy was hunted down as heresy and imprisoned as treason to the public weal.The marks of this difference in the external and internal circumstances of the two poets might be multiplied indefinitely. Yet they had much in common. Both stood above their age, and in a sense aloof from it. Both approached poetry in the spirit of thinkers bent upon extricating themselves from the trivialities of contemporary literature. The sonnets of both alike are contributions to philosophical poetry in an age when the Italians had lost their ancient manliness and energy. Both were united by the ties of study and affection to the greatest singer of their nation, Dante, at a time when Petrarch, thrice diluted and emasculated, was the Phoebus of academies and coteries.

This common antagonism to the degenerate genius of Italian literature is the link which binds Michael Angelo, the veteran giant of the Renaissance, to Campanella, the audacious Titan of the modern age.
Children of the Night

Edwin Arlington Robinson
This is a collection of poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson, titled the Children of the Night, and including, besides the famous title poem, several ballads, and poems dedicated to other authors and poets.
Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces

Thomas Hardy
Published in 1914, this is a compilation of 107 poems by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), who is probably better known as the author of such famous novels as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd.

Similar to his novels, the underlying themes of the majority of the poems in this collection are death, departure and unfulfilled love, while the central piece is comprised of the 15 short "Satires of Circumstance," funny poems with a bittersweet touch.

The poems have been recorded by our trio of readers John Burlinson, Tomas Peter and Sonia. As an interesting touch, some poems can be considered short dramatic readings, and as such have been performed as dialogues.
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