Poetry audiobooks page 8

This is a volume of poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson. This volume contains, among other poems, the famous poems The Valley of the Shadow and Lazarus.

While L. M. Montgomery is better known for her novels, such as Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon, she also wrote hundreds of poems. Her love of beauty, nature, and the sea is evident in this, the only volume of her poetry published during her lifetime.

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 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.

Jan Kochanowski (1530-84) was the greatest Polish poet of his time and probably the most famous name in Polish literature before Adam Mickiewicz (1798 - 1855). His masterpiece is considered to be his Laments, a series of nineteen poems commemorating his daughter Ursula, who died in 1579 at the age of two and a half . In simple but eloquent language, Kochanowski describes his journey from savage grief to reconciliation, and even in translation his verse retains much of its power and conviction.
In this bilingual presentation each poem will be read first in the original Polish and then in English translation.

"The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily Dickinson's poems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modern artificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of the qualities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatest themes,—life and love and death. That "irresistible needle-touch," as one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the very core of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic as it has been unexpected even to those who knew best her compelling power. This second volume, while open to the same criticism as to form with its predecessor, shows also the same shining beauties."

A poem for Halloween by the 17th century English author Robert Herrick. His poems were not widely popular at the time they were published. His style was strongly influenced by Ben Jonson, by the classical Roman writers, and by the poems of the late Elizabethan era. This must have seemed quite old-fashioned to an audience whose tastes were tuned to the complexities of the metaphysical poets such as John Donne and Andrew Marvell. His works were rediscovered in the early nineteenth century, and have been regularly printed ever since.

LibriVox volunteers bring you 9 recordings of My Springs by Sidney Lanier. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for April 7th, 2013. This rather lovely poem is the poet's tribute to his wife's eyes.

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.

This is a collection of short pieces, poetry or prose, fiction and non-fiction, in several different languages (except standard English). All chosen and recorded by Librivox volunteers. 01 - Hungarian - A gizehi pergamen-lapok by Gárdonyi Géza (1863-1922) [1890] - Text - Key words: prose, fiction, humour, paradise 02 - Italian - Il bove by Ida Baccini (1850-1911) [1882] - Text - Key words: Short story for children 03 - Italian - Nel carrozzone dei profughi by Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) [1884] - Text - Key words: short story, novel, verismo 04 - Latin - Passer by Catullus (84-54 BC) [1893] - Text - Key words: Latin poetry 05 - Japanese - Imado Gitsune by Osanai Kaoru (1881-1928) [1909] - ...