Benchmark - Poems

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43, from Sonnets from the Portuguese)

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.


Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet was born on 6 March 1806, in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, 11 of whom survived into adulthood. She was ill from her mid teens. She was influential in campaigning for the abolition of slavery and the introduction of child labour protection legislation. Her grandfather had been a slave owner in sugar plantations in Jamaica. She was a contemporary of, and met Coleridge, Tennyson, Carlyle, Wordsworth and Mitford. She met Robert Browning in 1845, and after a secret marriage, they moved to Italy in 1846. Whiting, describes her as “the most philosophical poet” living a life as “a Gospel of applied Christianity”. Barrett Browning died on 29 June 1861 at the age of 55, in Florence Italy.

How Do I Love Thee? sung by Femmes de Chanson, (2012) 
How Do I Love Thee? (Nathan Christensen) - Femmes de Chanson - 2012 (youtube.com)

How Do I Love Thee read by Dame Judi Dench
 How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (read by Dame Judi Dench) (youtube.com)

Reading by Patricia Conolly. With seven decades experience as a professional actress in three continents, Patricia Conolly has credits from most of the western world’s leading theatrical centres. She has worked extensively in her native Australia, in London’s West End, at The Royal Shakespeare Company, on Broadway, off Broadway, and widely in the USA and Canada. Her professional life includes noted productions with some of the greatest names in English speaking theatre, a partial list would include: Sir Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Maggie Smith, Rex Harrison, Dame Judi Dench, Tennessee Williams, Lauren Bacall, Rosemary Harris, Tony Randall, Marthe Keller, Wal Cherry, Alan Seymour, and Michael Blakemore.

She has played some 16 Shakespearean leading roles, including both Merry Wives, both Viola and Olivia, Regan (with Sir Peter Ustinov as Lear), and The Fool (with Hal Holbrook as Lear), a partial list of other classical work includes: various works of Moliere, Sheridan, Congreve, Farquar, Ibsen, and Shaw, as well as roles such as, Jocasta in Oedipus, The Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Yelena in Uncle Vanya (directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie), not to mention three Blanche du Bois and one Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Patricia has also made a significant contribution as a guest speaker, teacher and director, she has taught at The Julliard School of the Arts, Boston University, Florida Atlantic University, The North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Southern California, University of San Diego, and been a guest speaker at NIDA, and the Delaware MFA program.

In this short Life that only lasts an hour (1292)

By Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

In this short Life that only lasts an hour
How much - how little - is within our power

Emily Dickinson, American poet, was born on 10 December 1830 in Massachusetts. She was the daughter of a lawyer, later a US representative, who was the treasurer of Amherst College, founded by her grandfather, and the school which Dickinson attended, after her early years at Amherst Academy. She lived with her sister for many years. From her 20s she restricted social interaction, becoming a recluse in her later years. She was a prodigious writer of letters and poetry. Only 10 of her poems was published during her life time. The first edition of her poetry was published 4 years after she died, in 1890. It received great success, with 11 editions published over the next two years. Emily Dickinson died on 15 May 1886.

Reading by Patricia Conolly. With seven decades experience as a professional actress in three continents, Patricia Conolly has credits from most of the western world’s leading theatrical centres. She has worked extensively in her native Australia, in London’s West End, at The Royal Shakespeare Company, on Broadway, off Broadway, and widely in the USA and Canada. Her professional life includes noted productions with some of the greatest names in English speaking theatre, a partial list would include: Sir Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Maggie Smith, Rex Harrison, Dame Judi Dench, Tennessee Williams, Lauren Bacall, Rosemary Harris, Tony Randall, Marthe Keller, Wal Cherry, Alan Seymour, and Michael Blakemore.

She has played some 16 Shakespearean leading roles, including both Merry Wives, both Viola and Olivia, Regan (with Sir Peter Ustinov as Lear), and The Fool (with Hal Holbrook as Lear), a partial list of other classical work includes: various works of Moliere, Sheridan, Congreve, Farquar, Ibsen, and Shaw, as well as roles such as, Jocasta in Oedipus, The Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Yelena in Uncle Vanya (directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie), not to mention three Blanche du Bois and one Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Patricia has also made a significant contribution as a guest speaker, teacher and director, she has taught at The Julliard School of the Arts, Boston University, Florida Atlantic University, The North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Southern California, University of San Diego, and been a guest speaker at NIDA, and the Delaware MFA program.

Echo

By Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Come to me in the silence of the night;
   Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
   As sunlight on a stream;
      Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
   Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
   Where thirsting longing eyes
      Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
   My very life again tho’ cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
   Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
      Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.


Christina Georgina Rossetti, born on 5 December, 1830, was one of the foremost poets of her era. Her father, Gabrielle, was an Italian Poet, and later chair of Italian at King’s College, in London. Her mother Frances Polidor, an Ango-Italian, home schooled her children in a climate of intellectual excellence. From 1845 Christina, by then a prolific poet, suffered an illness, that some consider was at least influenced by mental illness. She continued to have bouts of serious illness throughout her life. Rossetti’s poetry, included the collections Goblin Market and other Poems (1862), The Prince’s Progress (1866), A Pageant (1881), and The Face of the Deep (1882). Christina Rossetti died on 29 December, 1894.

Stanford Chamber Chorale, conductor,  Stephen M Sano, with Laura Dahl, pianist, sing Norman Dello Joio’s Come to Me, My Love, a setting of Christina Rossetti’s “Echo”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyJs5oqyygs

Reading by Patricia Conolly. With seven decades experience as a professional actress in three continents, Patricia Conolly has credits from most of the western world’s leading theatrical centres. She has worked extensively in her native Australia, in London’s West End, at The Royal Shakespeare Company, on Broadway, off Broadway, and widely in the USA and Canada. Her professional life includes noted productions with some of the greatest names in English speaking theatre, a partial list would include: Sir Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Maggie Smith, Rex Harrison, Dame Judi Dench, Tennessee Williams, Lauren Bacall, Rosemary Harris, Tony Randall, Marthe Keller, Wal Cherry, Alan Seymour, and Michael Blakemore.

She has played some 16 Shakespearean leading roles, including both Merry Wives, both Viola and Olivia, Regan (with Sir Peter Ustinov as Lear), and The Fool (with Hal Holbrook as Lear), a partial list of other classical work includes: various works of Moliere, Sheridan, Congreve, Farquar, Ibsen, and Shaw, as well as roles such as, Jocasta in Oedipus, The Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Yelena in Uncle Vanya (directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie), not to mention three Blanche du Bois and one Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Patricia has also made a significant contribution as a guest speaker, teacher and director, she has taught at The Julliard School of the Arts, Boston University, Florida Atlantic University, The North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Southern California, University of San Diego, and been a guest speaker at NIDA, and the Delaware MFA program.

Life

By Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)

LIFE, believe, is not a dream
 So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
 Foretells a pleasant day.
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
 But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
 O why lament its fall ?

   Rapidly, merrily,
 Life's sunny hours flit by,
   Gratefully, cheerily,
 Enjoy them as they fly !

What though Death at times steps in
 And calls our Best away ?
What though sorrow seems to win,
 O'er hope, a heavy sway ?
Yet hope again elastic springs,
 Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
 Still strong to bear us well.
   Manfully, fearlessly,
 The day of trial bear,
   For gloriously, victoriously,
 Can courage quell despair !


Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 1816, in West Yorkshire, UK. She was an English poet and novelist. She was the eldest of the three Bronte sisters. Her siblings were Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, Branwell Brontë, Elizabeth Brontë, and Maria Brontë. She had a year of formal education at Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge. Thereafter she and her siblings learned at home, from each other and their parents, and aunt Elizabeth Branwell who lived with the family. She is famous for her novel Jane Eyre, which she first published under the pseudonym Currer Bell in 1847. She was married to Arthur Bell Nicholls from 1854 to 1855, for the last 9 months of her life. Nicholls had been the curate to Charlotte’s father, Patrick Brontë, an Anglican clergyman. Charlotte Brontë died on 31 March 1855 in Haworth, England.

Reading by Patricia Conolly. With seven decades experience as a professional actress in three continents, Patricia Conolly has credits from most of the western world’s leading theatrical centres. She has worked extensively in her native Australia, in London’s West End, at The Royal Shakespeare Company, on Broadway, off Broadway, and widely in the USA and Canada. Her professional life includes noted productions with some of the greatest names in English speaking theatre, a partial list would include: Sir Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Maggie Smith, Rex Harrison, Dame Judi Dench, Tennessee Williams, Lauren Bacall, Rosemary Harris, Tony Randall, Marthe Keller, Wal Cherry, Alan Seymour, and Michael Blakemore.

She has played some 16 Shakespearean leading roles, including both Merry Wives, both Viola and Olivia, Regan (with Sir Peter Ustinov as Lear), and The Fool (with Hal Holbrook as Lear), a partial list of other classical work includes: various works of Moliere, Sheridan, Congreve, Farquar, Ibsen, and Shaw, as well as roles such as, Jocasta in Oedipus, The Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Yelena in Uncle Vanya (directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie), not to mention three Blanche du Bois and one Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Patricia has also made a significant contribution as a guest speaker, teacher and director, she has taught at The Julliard School of the Arts, Boston University, Florida Atlantic University, The North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Southern California, University of San Diego, and been a guest speaker at NIDA, and the Delaware MFA program.

In My Craft or Sullen Art

By Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Dylan Marlais Thomas, poet, writer and broadcaster, was born on 27 October 1914 in Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales. His well-known works include Under Milk Wood, “a play for voices”, Do not go gentle into that good night, and, And death shall have no dominion. He loved Wales but was not a Welsh nationalist. His father wrote that he was “afraid Dylan isn’t much of a Welshman”. Robert Lowell, wrote of criticism of Thomas’ greatness as a poet, "Nothing could be more wrongheaded than the English disputes about Dylan Thomas's greatness...He is a dazzling obscure writer who can be enjoyed without understanding." The Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales described him, and particularly his life in New York City before his death as a "roistering, drunken and doomed poet."

Dylan Thomas reads “In My Craft or Sullen Art”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiw3uOT2eUc

Read by Colin McPhillamy, actor and playwright. Colin was born in London to Australian parents. He trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. In the UK he worked in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre for five seasons, and extensively in British regional theatre. In the USA he has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and at regional centres across the country. Colin has acted in Australia, China, New Zealand, and across Europe. Colin is married to Alan Conolly’s cousin Patricia Conolly, the renowned actor and stage actress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Conolly and 
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47250992.

Sonnet 66

By William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill.
Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.


William Shakespeare, born 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, was the eldest son of John Shakespeare, glovemaker, and Mary Arden. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, pregnant with their first child, and then aged 26. By 1592 Shakespeare’s reputation in London was well established. He was a founding member of the company of actors called The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Shakespeare wrote two plays a year for the company. Those plays included Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, and King Lear. The company was later known as The King’s Men, under the patronage of King James I. Shakespeare’s work includes 154 sonnets, published in a quarto in 1609, 6 sonnets written within plays, poetry and 38 plays. Shakespeare is believed to have died at the age of 52 on 23 April 1616. He is buried in the local parish church at Stratford-upon-Avon, Holy Trinity.

Read by Colin McPhillamy, actor and playwright. Colin was born in London to Australian parents. He trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. In the UK he worked in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre for five seasons, and extensively in British regional theatre. In the USA he has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and at regional centres across the country. Colin has acted in Australia, China, New Zealand, and across Europe. Colin is married to Alan Conolly’s cousin Patricia Conolly, the renowned actor and stage actress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Conolly and 
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47250992.

The Window

By Rumi (1207-1273)

Your body is away from me
but there is a window open
from my heart to yours.
From this window, like the moon
I keep sending news secretly.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, was born in Persia, (now part of Afghanistan) on 30 September 1207. He was a philosopher, scholar, medium and mystic. His poetry was written in Persian, but also Arabic, Greek and Turkish at times. His great influence and friend was Shams Tabrizi (1185-1248) a Persian Shafi’ite poet. After their meeting Rumi’s beliefs and life changed forever. Some of Rumi’s many inspirational words include “Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you”, “It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words". Words are a pretext", "When the world pushes you to your knees, you're in the perfect position to pray", “What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle,” “Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open?” His best known poem is Masnavi, 50,000 lines long, in 6 volumes, referred to as “the Koran in Persian”. Rumi died on 7 December 1273, aged 66 years in Konya, Türkiye. After Rumi’s death, his followers began the branch of Sufism, (Islamic mysticism), the Mevlevi Order, known as the “Whirling Dervishes”. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi

Sonnet 50: How heavy Do I Journey On the Way

By William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel’s end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!’
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider lov’d not speed being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.


William Shakespeare, born 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, was the eldest son of John Shakespeare, glovemaker, and Mary Arden. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, pregnant with their first child, and then aged 26. By 1592 Shakespeare’s reputation in London was well established. He was a founding member of the company of actors called The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Shakespeare wrote two plays a year for the company. Those plays included Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, and King Lear. The company was later known as The King’s Men, under the patronage of King James I. Shakespeare’s work includes 154 sonnets, published in a quarto in 1609, 6 sonnets written within plays, poetry and 38 plays. Shakespeare is believed to have died at the age of 52 on 23 April 1616. He is buried in the local parish church at Stratford-upon-Avon, Holy Trinity.

Read by Colin McPhillamy, actor and playwright. Colin was born in London to Australian parents. He trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. In the UK he worked in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre for five seasons, and extensively in British regional theatre. In the USA he has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and at regional centres across the country. Colin has acted in Australia, China, New Zealand, and across Europe. Colin is married to Alan Conolly’s cousin Patricia Conolly, the renowned actor and stage actress:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Conolly and 
 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47250992.

Sonnet 50 read by Patrick Stewart 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x7Y_KgrKjM

Iceland

By Jonas Hallgrimsson (1807-1845)

Charming and fair is the land,
and snow-white the peaks of the jokuls [glaciers],
Cloudless and blue is the sky,
the ocean is shimmering bright,
But high on the lave fields, where
still Osar river is flowing
Down into Almanna gorge,
Althing no longer is held,
Now Snorri's booth serves as a sheepfold,
the ling upon Logberg the sacred
Is blue with berries every year,
for children's and ravens' delight.
Oh, ye juvenile host
and full-grown manhood of Iceland!
Thus is our forefathers' fame
forgotten and dormant withal.


Jonas Hallgrimsson was born in Iceland on 16 November, 1807. He is a revered figure in Icelandic literature, writing in the Romantic style. His love of the Icelandic people and country side and pride in the national identity comes through his poetry. He was a promoter of the Icelandic Independence Movement. He was employed for a time by the sheriff of Reykjavik as a clerk. He studied law at the University of Copenhagen. He also worked as a defence lawyer. He founded the Icelandic periodical Fjolnir first published in 1835. He died on 26 May 1845, after slipping on stairs and breaking his leg, the previous day. He died of blood poisoning aged 37 years. His birthday each year is recognised as the Day of the Icelandic Language.

Ég bið að heilsa, words by Jónas Hallgrímsson, composition by Ingi T. Lárusson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OqbfGSJDUc

Adlestrop

By Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

Yes. I remember Adlestrop
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Edward Thomas, an English poet biographer, author, essayist, and critic was born on 3 March 1878, the son of Welsh parents, a railway clerk, politician and preacher Phillip Thomas, and Mary Townsend. His connection to Wales was important throughout his life. He was described by Aldous Huxley as “one of England’s most important poets”. Thomas wrote poetry from 1914, when he was 36, encouraged by his new neighbour, the then relatively unknown Robert Frost. During his life, his only published poetry was Six Poems (1916) under the pseudonym Edward Eastaway. Thomas struggled with the burden of constant production of what some critics described as “hack work” to support his family, and the work he wished to produce. At times he was reviewing up to 15 books each week. He made many attempts at suicide, suffering marital disharmony and depression. Adelstrop is considered one of Thomas’ finest poems. The poem describes the ordinary circumstances of Thomas’ train from Paddington to Malvern, stopping at Adlestrop station at 12:15pm with images of the surrounding English countryside. However the poem elicits profound feelings in the reader through those descriptions. Thomas was killed in the Battle of Arras, in France on 9 April 1917, having enlisted for service in the British infantry in 1915. Ted Hughes described Thomas as “the father of us all”.

Adestrop by Edward Thomas, composed by Susanna Self- the third of six “Songs of Immortality” 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NYUdo12yfg

Reading by Patricia Conolly. With seven decades experience as a professional actress in three continents, Patricia Conolly has credits from most of the western world’s leading theatrical centres. She has worked extensively in her native Australia, in London’s West End, at The Royal Shakespeare Company, on Broadway, off Broadway, and widely in the USA and Canada. Her professional life includes noted productions with some of the greatest names in English speaking theatre, a partial list would include: Sir Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Maggie Smith, Rex Harrison, Dame Judi Dench, Tennessee Williams, Lauren Bacall, Rosemary Harris, Tony Randall, Marthe Keller, Wal Cherry, Alan Seymour, and Michael Blakemore.

She has played some 16 Shakespearean leading roles, including both Merry Wives, both Viola and Olivia, Regan (with Sir Peter Ustinov as Lear), and The Fool (with Hal Holbrook as Lear), a partial list of other classical work includes: various works of Moliere, Sheridan, Congreve, Farquar, Ibsen, and Shaw, as well as roles such as, Jocasta in Oedipus, The Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Yelena in Uncle Vanya (directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie), not to mention three Blanche du Bois and one Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Patricia has also made a significant contribution as a guest speaker, teacher and director, she has taught at The Julliard School of the Arts, Boston University, Florida Atlantic University, The North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Southern California, University of San Diego, and been a guest speaker at NIDA, and the Delaware MFA program.

The Good-Morrow

By John Donne (1572-1631)

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

John Donne, was born in 1571 or 1572. His parents, John Donne, a warden of the Ironmongers Company, and Elizabeth Heywood, the daughter of John Heywood, playwright, were Roman Catholic at a time when it was illegal to practise the Catholic religion in England. When he was four years old his father died. His mother raised the family. He was later educated at the University of Cambridge, where he could not obtain a degree because he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy. He studied Law at Thavies Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery. He was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, as a lawyer in May 1592. He married Anne More, in opposition to her father, Lieutenant of the Tower of London. As a result he was incarcerated in Fleet Prison, when the wedding was discovered,  with Samuel Brooke, the Church of England priest who had married the couple, and his brother Christopher who had given away the bride at the wedding, in the place of her father George More. They were released when it was determined that the marriage was valid. Of his twelve children, two were still births three died in early childhood, and a daughter died at aged 18. The deaths drove Donne to thoughts of suicide. He worked as a country lawyer and as an ordained priest of the Church of England. His poetry was highly regarded by his contemporaries. He was the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral for two years from 1621. During the Restoration, following the execution of Chares 1 in 1649, and for centuries later Donne’s his work was ignored or rejected. However late in the 19th century and continuing his prose and poetry received acclaim. Ben Jonson described him as “The first poet in the world in some things”. Donne is considered the greatest of the metaphysical poets. Donne died on 31 March 1631 and is buried in old St Paul’s Cathedral.


Richard Burton reads, John Donne’s poem “The Good - Morrow” 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0a8MoJTh_E

Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home.

From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1

By William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Blink Of An Eye
 
By Brian Conolly (Published 22 May 2024)
 
An aurora peak of the ages.
A moment to draw that last breath
A final blink of the eye
A peaceful squeeze of the hand
A love says goodbye
 
Here we remain
A protected race of beings,
A world of nature and wonder
An impossible probability
Evolving in planet years.
Shrouded in a field
A magnetic shield
We live and grow and we die
 
Our ancestors and our children
Witness the same Luna cycles
We go and the days continue as before
None of us are here too long
 
We stand in our golden zone
Building ways to count the sky
How many solar worlds are there
they too will evolve and grow
Through ages of auroras
where distance is measured In light
Even planets can die
 
Our whole magnificent race
in this time of suns
also here in the blink of an eye
 
We live nearly a hundred years
And only ten make a millennia
Then only two millennia
For ancient writings.
It’s all really very recent
 
Water ripples sparkle the sun
Followed by a heron or a gull
Messages above and beyond
Inside the sea and on the land
 
Artists paint, and write, and photograph
Each seeing their own personal verse
Or lens
or colourway
The perspective from each is equally valid
No matter how different
 
Theirs is a view to anyone who will listen
Perhaps to learn a new angle
Yet the deep truth the artist feels
Remains mostly with them.
 
Come here today and stand by together
In your reality,
or others
or mine
It is all equally true
so embrace it
 
Cast no doubt that this man that passed us
Knew this well
Loving all
no matter the differences
He loved you and I loved him
 
All in the blink of an eye.
 

This poem recited by Brian Conolly was presented as a tribute to Alan Conolly in Upper Chapter House, following the funeral in St Andrew’s Cathedral on 23 May 2024.

From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1

By: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun
(a song from Cymbeline)

By: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!

The reading today is by Colin McPhillamy, actor, and Alan’s cousin. Colin was born in London to Australian parents. He trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. In the UK he worked in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre for five seasons, and extensively in British regional theatre. In the USA he has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and at regional centres across the country. Colin has acted in Australia, China, New Zealand, and across Europe. Colin is married to Alan’s cousin Patricia Conolly, the renowned actor and stage actress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Conolly and 
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47250992.

Bryn Terfel sings Shakespeare’s song “Fear No More the Heat O’ The Sun 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQNc1cxveUA

Dreams Within Dreams

By: Fiona Macleod (1855-1905)

I have gone out and seen the lands of Faery
And have found sorrow and peace and beauty there,
And have not known one from the other, but found each
Lovely and gracious alike, delicate and fair.
 
“They are children of one mother, she that is called Longing,
Desire, Love,” one told me: and another, “her secret name
Is Wisdom:” and another, “they are not three but one:”
And another, “touch them not, seek them not, they are wind and flame.”
 
I have come back from the hidden, silent lands of Faery
And have forgotten the music of its ancient streams:
And now flame and wind and the long, grey, wandering wave
And beauty and peace and sorrow are dreams within dreams.

William Sharp (12 September 1855 - 12 December 1905) wrote poetry, fiction and plays under the pseudonym “Fiona Macleod”. He was born in Paisley and attended the University of Glasgow. He was part of Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s circle, and was also a prominent figure in the Celtic revival of the 1890’s, together with W. B. Yeats, and much of his work as “Fiona Macleod” concerns Celtic traditions and folklore. He also published numerous books under his own name, including biographies of Rosetti, Swinburne and Browning. Suffering from poor health for most of his life, he died at the age of 50 in Sicily.

Song of Hope
 
By: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
 
O sweet To-morrow! –
After to-day
There will away
This sense of sorrow.
Then let us borrow
Hope, for a gleaming
Soon will be streaming,
Dimmed by no gray –
No gray!

While the winds wing us
Sighs from The Gone,
Nearer to dawn
Minute-beats bring us;
When there will sing us
Larks of a glory
Waiting our story
Further anon –
Anon!
 
Thomas Hardy, (2 June 1840 - 11 January 1928), author and poet, was born in Dorset, England. His father was a stonemason, and his mother who was well read, educated Thomas to the age of 8, at which time Thomas commenced as a student at Mr Last’s Academy for Young Gentlemen. On leaving school at the age of 16, due to his family’s lack of finances to fund a university education, Thomas became an apprentice architect. Much of his work involved the restoration of churches. In 1862 he enrolled at King’s College, London. He is best known for his novels, including Far from the Madding Crowd, (1874) and Tess of the d’Urbervilles, (1891). He was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit in 1910 and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in that year. He received a total of 25 nominations for the Novel Prize for literature during his life. Thomas Hardy died of pleurisy on 11 January 1928. He had wanted his body to be buried with his first wife Emma’s remains at Stinsford. She had died in 1912 and much of his poetry was inspired by his feelings of grief following her death. His Executor Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell compromised by having Thomas Hardy’s heart buried with the remains of his first wife Emma, and his ashes interred at Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey. At the time of his death his estate was worth 95,418 pounds, the equivalent of over 6 million pounds today. One of the largest literary societies in the world is the Thomas Hardy Society, based on Dorchester, https://www.hardysociety.org/.
 
Song of Hope by Thomas Hardy, read by Dylan Pearse, Music by Irish Folk Group, Kern 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1qo8sWTi6M

Scatterbrain and The Shipwreck

By: E. H. Visiak (1878-1972)

Scatterbrain

He goes wool-gathering ‘neath the stars;
   He hath a screw loose: Scatterbrain.
He hath a window loose that jars
   Open to heaven, and falls shut again.

The Shipwreck

She lies in primal darkness crushed and frore,
Ground in the mill of the ocean’s threshing-floor;
And monstrous fish, with phosphorescent eyes,
Explore a ruined city fallen from the skies.

E. H. Visiak was the pseudonym of Edward Harold Physick. In his lifetime, he was primarily known as the editor of the Nonesuch Press edition of Milton’s works, however his posthumous fame is almost entirely due to his visionary novel Medusa (1929) and for his friendship with the fantasy writer David Lindsay, author of Voyage to Arcturus. Visiak was born in London on 20 July 1878 and worked in variety of jobs in London and Manchester. In WW1 he was a conscientious objector. Prior to that, he had begun publishing poetry in magazines such as The New Age and Freewoman, alongside writers such as Ezra Pound, Rebecca West, Hillaire Bellloc, H.G. Wells and G.K. Chesterton, and published several slim books of poetry, including Buccaneer Ballads (1910) and The Phantom Ship (1912), which, as the titles suggest, often concerned pirates and supernatural occurrences, with a pronounced taste for the macabre. In addition to Medusa, he also wrote what would now be considered a Young Adult novel, The Haunted Island (1910) and The Shadow (1936). He was also a highly respected scholar of Milton and in addition to editing his work, wrote several studies, as well as a study of the author Joseph Conrad. In later life he settled in Hove, and his final work was an evocation of his childhood, Life’s Morning Hour (1969). He died on 30 August 1972, at the age of 94.

Autumn Song

By: Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

Autumn Song

When a sighing begins
In the violins
Of the autumn-song,
My heart is drowned
In the slow sound
Languorous and long
Pale as with pain,
Breath fails me when
The hours toll deep.
My thoughts recover
The days that are over,
And I weep.
And I go
Where the winds know,
Broken and brief,
To and fro,
As the winds blow
A dead leaf.
 
Chanson d’automne 

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone.
Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l’heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure;
Et je m’en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m’emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

Paul-Marie Verlaine was born on 30 March 1844, in Metz France. He was the son of an army officer, and dearly loved by his mother. He attended the Lycée Bonaparte in Paris obtaining in 1962 the baccalaureate. He then worked as a clerk in an insurance company. At the age of 14 he sent his poem “La Mort” to Victor Hugo. His work was associated with the Decadent and Symbolist movements. He was influenced by Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Chanson D’Automne, first published in 1866, is a poem often studied in school in France. In 1940 Charles Trenet put the words of the poem to music. The first phrase of the poem by Verlaine was used by the BBC to announce to the French resistance that the Allies had landed at Normandy. Verlaine’s poetry collections include, with publication dates, Invectives (1896), Chair (1896), Confessions (1895), Femmes (1890), Les Poètes maudits (1884), and Sagesse (1880). Verlaine was incarcerated for two years in 1874 having shot Rimbaud during an argument in Brussels the preceding year. On his release in 1875 he stayed in a Trappist retreat, again found his Catholic faith, then moved to England, teaching French. He returned to France in 1877. In 1886 after the death of his mother, and failed attempts to reconcile with his wife whom he had earlier abandoned, he lapsed into alcoholism. He was repeatedly admitted to hospital and despite receipt of monies from admirers and from the state lived in poverty. Verlaine was greatly admired during his life in London and in France. He died on 8 January 1896 at the age of 51 in Paris, France.

Chanson D’Automne, set to music by Stanislav Surin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6p3_RxJbyc

Charles Trenet sings Chanson D’Automne 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu5zpqC6hKE

Do not go gentle into that good night

By: Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953)

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Marlaise Thomas, a Welsh poet and writer, was born in Swansea, Wales, on 27 October 1914. He had published poetry by the time he was in his teens. It is said of him that he was “obsessed with words—with their sound and rhythm and especially with their possibilities for multiple meanings”. He was an alcoholic and destitute at many times throughout his life and known for his erratic behaviour, particularly in his later years. His well-known works included And death shall have no dominion and Under Milk Wood, a play for voices. Dylan Thomas travelled to the USA in the 1950s, giving readings of his work. He is acknowledged as one of the great poets of the 20th century and as one of the most important Welsh poets. He died on 9 November 1953 in New York. Many of Dylan Thomas’ works moved into the public domain on 1 January 2024. His work has inspired films, musical adaptions, and opera. The words and themes from the poem Do not go gentle into that good night were used in the films Independence Day in 1996 and Interstellar in 2014.
 
Dylan Thomas reads Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mRec3VbH3w
 
Michael Sheen, National Theatre, performs “Do not go gentle into that good night”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-sM-t1KI_Y

The Nightingale

By: Sara Coleridge (1802-1852)

In April comes the Nightingale,
That sings when day's departed;
The poets call her Philomel,
And vow she's broken-hearted.

To them her soft, sweet, ling'ring note
Is like the sound of sorrow;
But some aver, no need hath she
The voice of grief to borrow.

No, 'tis the merry Nightingale,
Her pipe is clear and thrilling;
No anxious care, no keen regret,
Her little breast is filling.

She grieves when boys have robb'd her nest,
But so would Stork or Starling;
What mother would not weep and cry
To lose her precious darling?

Our Destiny

By: (Myee) Minnie Louisa Brackenreg (1858-1936)

Would we pierce that mystic curtain
  That enshrouds our future years?
Would it please us to be certain
  Of their joys, and pains, and tears?

Would life’s pathway be as pleasant
  If we knew that we should fall
From the ideals of the present,
  Losing, maybe, faith in all?

Would a rose bloom just as sweetly
  If it knew a summer storm
Would its beauty spoil completely,
  Leaving it all crushed and torn?

Better keep Hope’s bright star shining
  With its clear celestial ray,
By no thoughts of our inclining
  To lift the veil and spoil the day.

Minnie Louisa Brackenreg (“Myee”) was born in 1858 to George and Dorcus Owen in Sydney. She married George Brackenreg in Maitland in about 1978. They had eight children, three of whom died in infancy or at birth. Her husband was the founding member of the NSW Rugby Football League (NSWRFL). She wrote, under the pen name Myee, three volumes of poetry. She lived her later years in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, following separation from, and then the death of her husband. Gems from the Mountains published in 1922 is available online through the State Library of Victoria https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE1751931&mode=browse. Her work was often inspired by religious images and themes. Chaplain Major Colwell of Katoomba, a methodist minister, wrote of Minnie Brackenreg in the forward to one of her volumes: “She has a great love of nature, and can see the Hand of God in it all, also the many lessons God desires to teach us through His Beautiful gifts”. She had 11 poems published in her local newspaper The Blue Mountain Echo. She died in 1936 in Katoomba. Her gravestone bears only the words “Myee 1936”.  She is one of the many forgotten Australian poets of the early 20th century.

Near Avalon

By: William Morris (1834-1896)

A ship with shields before the sun,
Six maidens round the mast,
A red-gold crown on every one,
A green gown on the last.

The fluttering green banners there
Are wrought with ladies' heads most fair,
And a portraiture of Guenevere
The middle of each sail doth bear.

A ship with sails before the wind,
And round the helm six knights,
Their heaumes are on, whereby, half blind,
They pass by many sights.

The tatter'd scarlet banners there
Right soon will leave the spear-heads bare.
Those six knights sorrowfully bear
In all their heaumes some yellow hair.

Up the Country

By: Henry Lawson (1867-1922)

I am back from up the country — very sorry that I went -
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track,
Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back.
Further out may be the pleasant scenes of which our poets boast,
But I think the country's rather more inviting round the coast.
Anyway, I'll stay at present at a boarding-house in town,
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes, taking baths and cooling down.

'Sunny plains'! Great Scott! — those burning wastes of barren soil and sand
With their everlasting fences stretching out across the land!
Desolation where the crow is! Desert where the eagle flies,
Paddocks where the luny bullock starts and stares with reddened eyes;
Where, in clouds of dust enveloped, roasted bullock-drivers creep
Slowly past the sun-dried shepherd dragged behind his crawling sheep.
Stunted peak of granite gleaming, glaring like a molten mass
Turned from some infernal furnace on a plain devoid of grass.

Miles and miles of thirsty gutters — strings of muddy water-holes
In the place of 'shining rivers' — 'walled by cliffs and forest boles.'
Barren ridges, gullies, ridges! where the ever-madd'ning flies —
Fiercer than the plagues of Egypt — swarm about your blighted eyes!
Bush! where there is no horizon! where the buried bushman sees
Nothing — Nothing! but the sameness of the ragged, stunted trees!
Lonely hut where drought's eternal, suffocating atmosphere
Where the God-forgotten hatter dreams of city life and beer.

Treacherous tracks that trap the stranger, endless roads that gleam and glare,
Dark and evil-looking gullies, hiding secrets here and there!
Dull dumb flats and stony rises, where the toiling bullocks bake,
And the sinister 'gohanna', and the lizard, and the snake.
Land of day and night — no morning freshness, and no afternoon,
When the great white sun in rising bringeth summer heat in June.
Dismal country for the exile, when the shades begin to fall
From the sad heart-breaking sunset, to the new-chum worst of all.

Dreary land in rainy weather, with the endless clouds that drift
O'er the bushman like a blanket that the Lord will never lift —
Dismal land when it is raining — growl of floods, and, oh! the woosh
Of the rain and wind together on the dark bed of the bush —
Ghastly fires in lonely humpies where the granite rocks are piled
In the rain-swept wildernesses that are wildest of the wild.

Land where gaunt and haggard women live alone and work like men,
Till their husbands, gone a-droving, will return to them again:
Homes of men! if home had ever such a God-forgotten place,
Where the wild selector's children fly before a stranger's face.
Home of tragedy applauded by the dingoes' dismal yell,
Heaven of the shanty-keeper — fitting fiend for such a hell —
And the wallaroos and wombats, and, of course, the curlew's call —
And the lone sundowner tramping ever onward through it all!

I am back from up the country, up the country where I went
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have shattered many idols out along the dusty track,
Burnt a lot of fancy verses — and I'm glad that I am back.
I believe the Southern poets' dream will not be realised
Till the plains are irrigated and the land is humanised.
I intend to stay at present, as I said before, in town
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes, taking baths and cooling down.

Henry Archibald Herzberg Lawson, Australian poet and writer, was born on 17 June 1867 in Grenfell, NSW, the son of Louisa Lawson, an Australian publisher and poet and Niels Herzberg, a miner, born in Norway. Louisa was the editor of The Dawn, a feminist paper. In about 1987,  at 19 years of age, Henry Lawson moved to Sydney, joined his mother in publishing, went to night school to matriculate and worked, including as a painter, and later in Newcastle at Hudson Brothers Railway workshops. He had a relationship with Mary Gilmore in 1890.

Up the Country was first published in The Bulletin on 8 July 1892 under the title “Borderland”. His poems painted a picture of rural and bush life in Australia that was realistic rather than idealised. His work popularised the Australian vernacular. He married, had two children and then after an unhappy marriage, divorced in 1903 after a long separation.

He was an alcoholic who suffered episodes of severe depression and poverty. He was incarcerated in Darlinghurst Gaol seven times over 4 years for non-payment of child support, wife and child desertion and drunkenness. He called the gaol “Starvinghurst Gaol”.

From 1903 he boarded at Mrs Isabel Byers’ Coffee Palace in North Sydney, and she supported him, and championed his work for the rest of his life, writing letters and meeting publishers on his behalf and assisting him financially. Lawson died on 2 September 1922 at the home of Mrs Isabel Byers at Abbotsford in Sydney. He was given a state funeral attended by thousands, including Billy Hughes.

Paul J Mailath, actor, reads Up the Country by Henry Lawson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwPwrwHLPQQ

Libby Hathorn,  Author and Poet, presents Poets of Australia: Henry Lawson, the story of the work and life of Henry Lawson, produced and published by the State Library of NSW 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC-n_b0kV1c

The Song My Paddle Sings

By: (Emily) Pauline Johnson (1862-1913)

West wind, blow from your prairie nest,
Blow from the mountains, blow from the west.
The sail is idle, the sailor too;
O! wind of the west, we wait for you.
Blow, blow!
I have wooed you so,
But never a favour you bestow.
You rock your cradle the hills between,
But scorn to notice my white lateen.

I stow the sail, unship the mast:
I wooed you long but my wooing's past;
My paddle will lull you into rest.
O! drowsy wind of the drowsy west,
Sleep, sleep,
By your mountain steep,
Or down where the prairie grasses sweep!
Now fold in slumber your laggard wings,
For soft is the song my paddle sings.

August is laughing across the sky,
Laughing while paddle, canoe and I,
Drift, drift,
Where the hills uplift
On either side of the current swift.

The river rolls in its rocky bed;
My paddle is plying its way ahead;
Dip, dip,
While the waters flip
In foam as over their breast we slip.

And oh, the river runs swifter now;
The eddies circle about my bow.
Swirl, swirl!
How the ripples curl
In many a dangerous pool awhirl!

And forward far the rapids roar,
Fretting their margin for evermore.
Dash, dash,
With a mighty crash,
They seethe, and boil, and bound, and splash.

Be strong, O paddle! be brave, canoe!
The reckless waves you must plunge into.
Reel, reel.
On your trembling keel,
But never a fear my craft will feel.

We've raced the rapid, we're far ahead!
The river slips through its silent bed.
Sway, sway,
As the bubbles spray
And fall in tinkling tunes away.

And up on the hills against the sky,
A fir tree rocking its lullaby,
Swings, swings,
Its emerald wings,
Swelling the song that my paddle sings.

Emily Pauline Johnson, a Canadian Indian poet was born on 10 March 1862. She was the daughter of a Mohawk chief. Her mother was English. Her poetry was first published when she was a teenager under the Indian name “Tekahionwake”. She toured the US and England giving recitals of her poetry, wearing a buckskin dress. The Song My Paddle Sings was one of her best-known poems and talks of the the determination required for every journey in life.  She and her contemporaries started to define a new period of literature in Canada. Pauline Johnson died on 7 March 1913 in Vancouver, B.C.

The Song My Paddle Sings, sung by the choir of Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, the UWO Les Choristes 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8WOEin1xng

A Shropshire Lad  2: Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

By: A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Alfred Edward Housman, an English poet and academic, was born on 26 March 1859 in Bromsgrove, UK. His father was a solicitor. His mother died when he was 12 years old. Loveliest of trees, the cherry now, is the second poem in Housman’s well known collection A Shropshire Lad. Housman was not revealed to be the poet of the cycle of poems until 1896. He was the Professor of Latin at University College, London and later at Cambridge. His study of the classics, including his editions of Manilius, Lucan and Juvenal are authoritative works. Housman died on 30 April 1936 at Cambridge.

Dame Judi Dench recites Loveliest of trees, the cherry now, for The Queen’s Green Canopy launch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO4gcHaqrhg

George Williams sings, Loveliest of trees. Music by George Butterworth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lchJ3h-4U4w

I wish I could remember that first day

By: Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or Winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom for many a May.
If only I could recollect it, such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand—Did one but know!

Christina Rossetti was an English poet and author, born on 5 December, 1830 in London. She was the daughter of the poet and political exile from Italy, Gabriele Rossetti, who later taught at King’s College. She was the sister of the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and sat for many of his well-known paintings. One of her best-known works was “In the Bleak Midwinter” which later became a Christmas carol. She wrote devotional prose, children’s books and novels. She was one of the first female stamp collectors commencing in 1847. The world’s first adhesive postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued in the UK on 1 May 1840, only 7 years before Christina Rosetti started her stamp collection. Rossetti died on 29 December 1893 and was buried at Highgate Cemetery in the family grave.

Dame Judi Dench recites I wish I could remember that first day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYEOi-3PVkY

Kings College Choir sings In the bleak mid-winter, music by Gustav Holst, arranged by Mack Wilberg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTzqMi2AQF8

Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old

By: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

Although his exact birth date is not known, Shakespeare was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon on 26 April 1564. His mother’s first two children died in infancy. His father was at one time bailiff of Stratford. Shakespeare attended King’s New School. Scholars have suggested that Shakespeare had been a schoolteacher a law clerk and a soldier, although Shakespeare became known as an author, poet, playwright and actor. Records are sparse concerning some periods of his life. He married Anne Hathaway when he was 18 years of age, and they had a daughter and twins two years later in 1585. His work as an actor was affected by an outbreak of the plague in 1592 when all theatres were closed to prevent the spread of infection. Sonnet 14, is written in the form of Shakespeare’s other sonnet - 14 lines long, divided into quatrains, with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain rhyming. William Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, on or about the date of his 52nd birthday.

Patrick Stewart reads Sonnet 104 by William Shakespeare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itC4NsqpDL0

Jessica Bell, actress recites Shakespear’s Sonnet 104
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL1VGgZMMHU

Sir John Gielgud reads Sonnet 104
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZXp8wJfucA

The Flaming Heart

By: Richard Crashaw (c.1613-1649)

O heart, the equal poise of love’s both parts,
Big alike with wounds and darts,
Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same,
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame;
Live here, great heart, and love and die and kill,
And bleed and wound, and yield and conquer still.
Let this immortal life, where’er it comes,
Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms;
Let mystic deaths wait on ’t, and wise souls be
The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee.
O sweet incendiary! show here thy art,
Upon this carcass of a hard cold heart,
Let all thy scatter’d shafts of light, that play
Among the leaves of thy large books of day,
Combin’d against this breast, at once break in
And take away from me my self and sin;
This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be,
And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me.
O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dow’r of lights and fires,
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove,
By all thy lives and deaths of love,
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large than they,
By all thy brim-fill’d bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last morning’s draught of liquid fire,
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seiz’d thy parting soul and seal’d thee his,
By all the heav’ns thou hast in him,
Fair sister of the seraphim!
By all of him we have in thee,
Leave nothing of my self in me:
Let me so read thy life that I
Unto all life of mine may die.

Richard Crashaw’s exact date of birth is unknown; however, it is believed that he was born in late 1612 or early 1613 in London. Crashaw taught English poetry and was predominantly known in the 17th-century as a major metaphysical poet. In 1643 he fled first to France and then the Papal States as a refugee, as the Puritan General Oliver Cromwell gained control over England. He worked as Cardinal Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta's attendant in Rome, converting from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. In April 1649, Richard Crashaw was canonized by Cardinal Pallotta at the Holy House Shrine in Loreto, where he passed away unexpectedly four months later.

In Memoriam, (Ring out, wild bells)

By: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born on 6 August 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. Ring Out, Wild Bells, was part of In Memoriam, written to Arthur Henry Hallam, who died at 22. The poem was published in 1850, the year Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate. The poem is inspired by the English custom to have the ring of bells, muffled to ring out the old year, and then, with muffles removed, to ring in the new year. Ring Out, Wild Bells, has been set to music including by Charles Gounod and Percy FletcherAlfred, Lord Tennyson died on 6 October 1892.

Ring Out, Wild Bells, Gounod, sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVEAt8v7b_g

Ring Out, Wild Bells, from The Passing of the Year by Jonathan Dove, Andrew Hon, conductor, sung by the Yale Glee Club
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPIqqvOM8Og

Bell Ringing in the Belfry at Great St. Mary’s, Cambridge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNMFvNZIsCM

Claribel
 
By: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
 
Where Claribel low-lieth
The breezes pause and die,
Letting the rose-leaves fall:
But the solemn oak-tree sigheth,
Thick-leaved, ambrosial,
With an ancient melody
Of an inward agony,
Where Claribel low-lieth.
 
At eve the beetle boometh
Athwart the thicket lone:
At noon the wild bee hummeth
About the moss'd headstone:
At midnight the moon cometh,
And looketh down alone.
Her song the lintwhite swelleth,
The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth,
The callow throstle lispeth,
The slumbrous wave outwelleth,
The babbling runnel crispeth,
The hollow grot replieth
Where Claribel low-lieth.
 
Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born on 6 August 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. His father, an Anglican priest, and the son of an MP, married Mary Turner an heiress, and was described as being a man of “superior abilities and varied attainments, who tried his hand with fair success in architecture, painting, music, and poetry”. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School and then Trinity College, Cambridge. He was Poet Laureate from 1850 to 1892, and was greatly admired by Queen Victoria and Albert, Prince Consort. He married Emily Sellwood in 1850 and they had two sons. Claribel was one of Tennyson's well-known poems, and included in his first collection Poems, Chiefly Lyrical published in 1830. His best-known poems include Ulysses and The Charge of the Light Brigade. One of his famous lines is “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”, from In Memoriam. Alfred, Lord Tennyson died on 6 October 1892.

The Tenant-For-Life

By: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

The sun said, watching my watering-pot
    "Some morn you'll pass away;
    These flowers and plants I parch up hot -
    Who'll water them that day?


    "Those banks and beds whose shape your eye
    Has planned in line so true,
    New hands will change, unreasoning why
    Such shape seemed best to you.


    "Within your house will strangers sit,
    And wonder how first it came;
    They'll talk of their schemes for improving it,
    And will not mention your name.


    "They'll care not how, or when, or at what
    You sighed, laughed, suffered here,
    Though you feel more in an hour of the spot
    Than they will feel in a year


    "As I look on at you here, now,
    Shall I look on at these;
    But as to our old times, avow
    No knowledge - hold my peace! . . .


    "O friend, it matters not, I say;
    Bethink ye, I have shined
    On nobler ones than you, and they
    Are dead men out of mind!"

Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840 in the United Kingdom. His father Thomas was a builder, and his mother Jemima educated Thomas until he started school at the age of 8. Thomas later was educated at Mr Last’s Academy for Young Gentlemen, where he excelled. He was an apprentice architect from age 16, but later studied at King’s College London. He was influenced, in the realist tradition by Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Charles Dickens. He championed the cause of rural workers, and was interested in social reform, rebelling against the class structure in the UK. He adapted novels, for theatre, wrote poetry and novels. He became involved in the protection of ancient buildings from developers. His novels include Far from the Madding Crowd (published 1874) and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (published in 1891). He died on 11 January 1928 from “cardiac syncope” and “old age” (as recorded on his death certificate). On 16 January 1928 Thomas Hardy’s ashes were buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, next to the grave of Charles Dickens.

Thomas Hardy’s Funeral (1928)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWHQTyxGcY0

Alan Bates reads “the Going” by Thomas Hardy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRkpEC0nIi4

Discipline

By: George Herbert (1593-1633)

Throw away thy rod,
Throw away thy wrath:
                  O my God,
Take the gentle path.

For my heart’s desire
Unto thine is bent:
                  I aspire
To a full consent.

Not a word or look
I affect to own,
                  But by book,
And thy book alone.

Though I fail, I weep:
Though I halt in pace,
                  Yet I creep
To the throne of grace.

Then let wrath remove;
Love will do the deed:
                  For with love
Stony hearts will bleed.

Love is swift of foot;
Love’s a man of war,
                  And can shoot,
And can hit from far.

Who can ’scape his bow?
That which wrought on thee,
                  Brought thee low,
Needs must work on me.

Throw away thy rod;
Though man frailties hath,
         Thou art God:
Throw away thy wrath.

George Herbert was born on 3 April 1593 in Wales, into one of the oldest and most important families in Montgomeryshire. His mother was said to have been an extraordinary woman who managed the family’s complex finances, the education of their 10 children, and the home, moving to advance the interests and education of the children. She was a friend of the poet John Donne, who stood in as godfather to the children after the death of Herbert’s father in 1596. Herbert was said to have been deeply devoted to his mother. He was educated at home, but then attended Westminster School, and then Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating, he remained as a lecturer and was made university orator at Cambridge. He wrote much of his poetry at this time, in English and Latin. He had a modest income and was concerned throughout his life about his finances, and concerned for his health, writing “I alwaies fear’d sickness more than death because sickness has made me unable to perform those Offices for which I came into the world.” By 1624 he was required to take holy orders to remain at Cambridge (usually required within seven years of obtaining a master’s degree). However he left Parliamend and Cambridge, and received ordination as a deacon. He became a priest of the small parish at Bemerton, having married in 1629, remaining there for his last three years. He died on 1 March 1633. He is known as one of the most important British devotional poets and lyricists.

There may be chaos still around the world
 
By: George Santayana (1863-1952)
 
There may be chaos still around the world,
This little world that in my thinking lies;
For mine own bosom is the paradise
Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled.
Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled,
Unmindful of the changing outer skies,
Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,
Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.
I heed them not; or if the subtle night
Haunt me with deities I never saw,
I soon mine eyelid’s drowsy curtain draw
To hide their myriad faces from my sight.
They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe
A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.
 
George Santayana was born Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás on December 16, 1863, in Madrid, Spain. He was raised in the USA from the age of 8 and was educated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard College. He studied in Berlin, and was later a Professor of Philosophy at Harvard from 1889 to 1912. He was a novelist, poet, and philosopher. His books include The Sense of Beauty (1896) and his 5 volume The Life of Reason, and 4 volumes The Realms of Being. He was an atheist who described himself as an “aesthetic Catholic”. His aphorisms include his description of fanaticism as “redoubling your effort after you’ve forgotten your aim”, and phrases such as “Only the dead have seen the end of the war”, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” and “A child educated only at school is an uneducated child”. His quoted words also include “The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.” He died on 26 September 1952.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana
 
George Santayana on Meaning in Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-o24oiQVvQ

Renouncement

By: Alice Meynell (1847-1922)

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight—
   The thought of thee—and in the blue heaven’s height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
   This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
   When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—
   With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.

Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell was born on 11 October 1847 in Barnes, London. The family lived mainly in Italy. Charles Dickens was a friend of her father. Alice married Wilfrid Meynell and had eight children, including Francis who became a poet and viola who was a writer. She was a British suffragist and poet, who also worked as an editor and a critic. Alice Meynell was frequently ill throughout her life. Her work was published in The Spectator, the Scots Observer, and the Saturday Review. She died on 27 November 1922 in London. She was twice considered for Poet Laureate of the UK. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was her third cousin.

My Childhood Home I See Again
 
By: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
 
My childhood home I see again,
    And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
    There's pleasure in it too.
 
O Memory! thou midway world
    'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
    In dreamy shadows rise,
 
And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
    Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
    All bathed in liquid light.
 
As dusky mountains please the eye
    When twilight chases day;
As bugle-notes that, passing by,
    In distance die away;
 
As leaving some grand waterfall,
    We, lingering, list its roar—
So memory will hallow all
    We've known, but know no more.
 
Near twenty years have passed away
    Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
    And playmates loved so well.
 
Where many were, but few remain
    Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
    The lost and absent brings.
 
The friends I left that parting day,
    How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
    And half of all are dead.
 
I hear the loved survivors tell
    How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
    And every spot a grave.
 
I range the fields with pensive tread,
    And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
    I'm living in the tombs.
 
Abraham Lincoln was born on 12 February 1809, in Kentucky, in poverty, and raised on the frontier. His brother died at birth. His mother died of milk sickness, in 1818, when Abraham was 9 years old. His sister Sarah died 10 years later leaving Lincoln devastated, and an only child. He was self-educated and is believed to have had formal lessons for less than a year of his life until the age of 15. Until he was 21, he worked as a farm labourer, giving all his earnings to his father. He became a lawyer, in Springfield, handling “every kind of business that could come from a prairie lawyer”. Much of his work involved transportation, river barge and railroad conflicts. He appeared before the Illinois Supreme Court in 175 cases and appeared alone in 51 of those cases. His legal reputation was the origin of his nickname “Honest Abe”. He was a member of the legislature and was a congressman for Illinois. He wrote My Childhood Home I See Again in 1847. He was the 16th president of the United States from 1861 to 1865. He led the Union during the American Civil War. He spoke at the dedication of the Gettysburg Battlefield cemetery in 1863, giving the “Gettysburg Address”,  beginning with the words “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. On 14 April 1865, the day he had signed legislation to establish the US Secret Service, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, at Ford’s Theatre. Lincoln died in Washington, D.C. on 15 April 1865.
 
My Childhood Home I see Again, music composed and sung by Julia Bloom, with photographs and paintings from the Civil War era. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2saL3seldPg
 
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, read by President Obama, in 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHAyepp7ypY

Loves Poem
 
By: Theocritus (c.300 BC, to circa 260 BC)
 
'Sincerity comes with the wine-cup,' my dear:
Then now o'er our wine-cups let us be sincere.
My soul's treasured secret to you I'll impart;
It is this; that I never won fairly your heart.
One half of my life, I am conscious, has flown;
The residue lives on your image alone.
You are kind, and I dream I'm in paradise then;
You are angry, and lo! all is darkness again.
It is right to torment one who loves you? Obey
Your elder; 'twere best; and you'll thank me one day.
Settle down in one nest on one tree (taking care
That no cruel reptile can clamber up there):
As it is with your lovers you're fairly perplexed;
One day you choose one bough, another the next.
Whoe'er at all struck by your graces appears,
Is more to you straight than the comrade of years;
While he's like the friend of a day put aside;
For the breath of your nostrils, I think, is your pride.
Form a friendship, for life, with some likely young lad;
So doing, in honour your name shall be had.
Nor would Love use you hardly; though lightly can he
Bind strong men in chains, and has wrought upon me
Till the steel is as wax- but I'm longing to press
That exquisite mouth with a clinging caress.

No? Reflect that you're older each year than the last;
That we all must grow gray, and the wrinkles come fast.
Reflect, ere you spurn me, that youth at his sides
Wears wings; and once gone, all pursuit he derides:
Nor are men over keen to catch charms as they fly.
Think of this and be gentle, be loving as I:
When your years are maturer, we two shall be then
The pair in the Iliad over again.
But if you consign all my words to the wind
And say, 'Why annoy me? you're not to my mind,'
I- who lately in quest of the Gold Fruit had sped
For your sake, or of Cerberus guard of the dead-
Though you called me, would ne'er stir a foot from my door,
For my love and my sorrow thenceforth will be o'er.

Translated by C. S. Calverley
 
Theocritus (300BC to 260 BC) was a Greek Poet, the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry, (termed “bucolics”). The pastorals introduced the setting of shepherds, and shepherdesses and nymphs and were the source of inspiration for much later poetry including John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Matthew Arnold. He is believed to have lived in Sicily as he refers to the Cyclops in the Odyssey as his “countryman”, however he may have been born in Syracuse. A number of works attributed to Theocritus are thought now to be of doubtful authenticity.

Sonnet 1: I thought once how Theocritus had sung
 
By: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
 
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightaway I was ‘ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,
“Guess now who holds thee?” – “Death,” I said, But, there,
The silver answer rang, — “Not Death, but Love.”
 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (6 March 1806 to 29 June 1861), was of Victorian England’s best known poets. She grew up at Hope End, a 500-acre estate in Herefordshire which her father bought when Elizabeth was three years old. She lived there with her 10 surviving siblings and her parents. She wrote poetry from a very young age. Her family had lived in Jamaica for a generation, from 1655, deriving their wealth from the sugar cane plantations and slave labour. Elizabeth lived a life of freedom from the usual constraints of the time, riding and fishing. After the death of her brother Edward, by drowning she closed her small circle of friends to a handful of people only. Barrett- Browning wrote Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of 44 love sonnets, between 1845 and 1846. She married Robert Browning, secretly in 1846 when she was 40 and he was 34 years old. Consequently, her father disinherited her. From 1846 she and her husband lived in Italy. She suffered from a debilitating condition throughout her life with symptoms of general exhaustion and weakness, spinal pain and possibly tuberculosis. She wrote The Cry of the Children, condemning child labour and she campaigned for the abolition of slavery. She died in 1861 at the age of 55, in Florence, Italy

No Coward Soul Is Mine

By: Emily Bronte (1818-1848)

No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven's glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear

O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee

There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.

Emily Bronte, an English poet and novelist, was born on 30 July 1818 in Yorkshire, UK. Her mother died when she was three years old. She and her sisters were educated at the Clergy Daughters’ School. She is best known for the novel Wuthering Heights. Her siblings included Charlotte Bronte, the author of the novel Jane Eyre. Only three Bronte girls survived into adulthood, after Elizabeth and Maria died of typhoid. Emily became a teacher, however she returned home, and thereafter kept house, while working on her literature and poetry, learning German and playing the piano. Emily was reclusive throughout her life. Constantin Heger wrote of her character “She should have been a man - a great navigator. Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old; and her strong imperious will would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty, never have given way but with life. She had a head for logic, and a capability of argument unusual in a man and rarer indeed in a woman...impairing this gift was her stubborn tenacity of will which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes, or her own sense of right, was concerned“.   
 
Her sister Charlotte Bronte wrote of her: “My sister's disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she knew them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word”. Emily Bronte died on 19 December 1848. The current president of the Bronte Society in the UK is Dame Judi Dench.

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

By: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, an American poet and playwright was born on 22 February 1892 in Maine. Her mother was a nurse and her father a schoolteacher. Her middle name is from St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York City, where her uncle had recovered from a serious illness just before she was born. Her parents separated when she was young. She won poetry competitions from an early age. Her first well known poem was Renascence, written while she was still a teenager. She was well known as a feminist in the 1920s in New York City. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1923. One of her best known collections of poetry is The Ballad of the Harp- Weaver. She died on 19 October 1950, aged 58, in Austerlitz, New York.

Jodie Foster reads Love is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZEIyGriOEo&list=PLTR8eXa0mGYb-t7MI17Lht6BdSbbFCMWp&index=23

Edna St. Vincent Millay, reads her poem Love is Not Al
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvgDAOG8W6c

Lost Faith

By: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

    To lose one's faith surpasses
    The loss of an estate,
    Because estates can be
    Replenished, -- faith cannot.

    Inherited with life,
    Belief but once can be;
    Annihilate a single clause,
    And Being's beggary.

Emily Dickinson, was born on 10 December 1830. Her father was a lawyer, and a trustee of Amherst College where Emily Dickinson was later educated. Her forebears had travelled to Massachusetts two hundred years earlier as part of the Great Puritan Migration. Although now regarded as one of America’s greatest poets, Emily was not well known as a writer while she was alive. She wrote 1800 poems but only 10 were published during her life. Emily lived a reclusive life for over 20 years, and there has been speculation as to whether her seclusion may have been because of a medical issue, such as epilepsy or autism. Emily Dickinson died on 15 May 1886. Although the cause of death is nominated as Bright’s Disease on the death certificate, her medical practitioner said that she had not permitted him to examine her or take her pulse for two years before her death. There is a suggestion that she died following a stroke. Although she had extracted from her sister Lavinia, a promise that after Emily’s death her poems would be burned, her sister Lavinia published her poems with the assistance of Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd. The poems were heavily edited to fit conventions of the day, and it was not until 1955 that Emily Dickinson’s poetry was published in the original form in which it had been written.

Study Nature
 
By: Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

I do.   
    Victim.
    Sales   
    Met   
    Wipe   
    Her   
    Less.
    Was a disappointment
    We say it.
                     Study nature.   
    Or
    Who   
    Towering.
    Mispronounced
    Spelling.
    She   
    Was   
    Astonishing
    To
    No   
    One   
    For   
    Fun
                     Study from nature.   
    I
    Am   
    Pleased
    Thoroughly
    I
    Am   
    Thoroughly
    Pleased.
    By.   
    It.
    It is very likely.
                     They said so.
    Oh.
    I want.   
    To do.
    What
    Is
    Later
    To
    Be
    Refined.
    By   
    Turning.
    Of turning around.
                     I will wait.
 
Gertrude Stein, an American playwright, novelist, poet and art collector, was born on 3 February 1874 in Pennsylvania, the youngest of 5 children. Her family moved to Paris when she was three, returning to live in Oakland, California in 1878. Her mother died when she was 14, and her father died three years later. She attended Radcliffe College. In 1897 she enrolled in Johns Hopkins School of Medicine but left in her fourth year. She collected art throughout her life. She moved to Paris in 1903 where she remained for the rest of her life. She met her life partner Alice B. Toklas in 1907. She was an associate of Picasso, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Matisse, who she often hosted in her famous Salons. In 1933 she published The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, a bestselling autobiography, written by her in the voice of her partner. Although Jewish, In the Second World War she was a collaborator with Vichy, France, and wrote supporting Hitler and the Nazis. Some suggest that her support was expedient, however her writings praised the regime after the war hand ended. She died in 1946 in France following surgery for stomach cancer. Her last words before falling into a coma are said to have been “What is the answer?” and when she received no response “In that case, what is the question?”. Alice B. Toklas was later buried next to her.
 
Kathy Bates, actor, reads “If I Told Him, a completed portrait of Picasso ” by Gertrude Stein 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52aasryN_Wc
 
A home move of the Stein home in 1927
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX4NMuJGOsY
 
Gertrude Stein reads extracts from “The Making of Americans”, a novel completed by her in 1911, and first published in book form in 1925
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKOo28Cvqi4

My Dead Dream
 
By: Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949)
 
Have you found me, at last, O my Dream? Seven eons ago
You died and I buried you deep under forests of snow.
Why have you come hither? Who bade you awake from your sleep
And track me beyond the cerulean foam of the deep?
Would you tear from my lintels these sacred green garlands of leaves?
Would you scare the white, nested, wild pigeons of joy from my eaves?
Would you touch and defile with dead fingers the robes of my priest?
Would you weave your dim moan with the chantings of love at my feast?
Go back to your grave, O my Dream, under forests of snow,
Where a heart-riven child hid you once, seven eons ago.
Who bade you arise from your darkness? I bid you depart!
Profane not the shrines I have raised in the clefts of my heart.
 
Dr. Sarojini Naidu, born Sarojini Chattopadhyaya, in Hyderabad, India on 13 February 1879, was a child prodigy, and considered to be brilliant intellectually as a poet, linguist, writer and political activist. She won a scholarship to Kings College, London where she studied from 1895, when she was 16 years of age, and later at Madras University and Girton College, Cambridge. She married in 1898, to Dr Naidu, a marriage supported by both their parents, although the inter-caste marriage was at that time in India considered to be against societal norms, and even criminal in some parts of society. They had five children. She spoke many languages fluently. In 1905 she joined the Indian Nationalist Movement, and met Mahatma Gandhi in 1916. She worked in the movement for freedom for India from British control, and for women’s rights and civil rights. For 3 years from 1915 she travelled throughout India giving political lectures. She was arrested and imprisoned for two years because of her political activism. In 1925 she became the President of the Indian National Congress and from 1947 she was Governor of the United Provinces (later Uttar Pradesh). She received the Hind Kesari medal in 1928. She wrote books, poetry and songs throughout her life. She died on 2 March 1949. As a poet, she was referred to as the “Nightingale of India”. Her birthday, 13 February, is celebrated as Women’s Day in India.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarojini_Naidu
 
Sarojini Naidu, gives a speech in the USA on her arrival in 1928
Sarojini Naidu, gives a speech in the USA on arrival
 
Dr Sarojini Naidu, 11 December 1946, Constituent Assembly Speech,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzf3dWo4EoE

Sonnet 116

By: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
 
Sonnet 116 was first published in 1609, (misnumbered in the 1609 Quatro as Sonnet 119). Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564. He was believed to have been educated by well versed masters. At the age of 18 he married Ann Hathaway of Stratford, who was eight years his senior. They had three children, Susanna and then twins Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare joined an acting company, working in London. In 1592 Robert Greene a playwright referred to Shakespeare as “an upstart crow”. Shakespeare then joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, an acting company under the patronage of Henry Carey, Lord Husdon. With others, Shakespeare financed the building of the Globe Theatre, one of the most famous Elizabethan playhouses. By 1596 Shakespeare had been granted a coat of arms. He died on 23 April 1616, and is buried in Trinity Church Stratford.

Judi Dench, recites Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzbro1tDuuA

Juliette Stevenson, reads Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKyuzXwSolA

Vespers

By: A. A. Milne (1882-1956)

Little boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on the little hands little gold head,
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

God bless Mummy. I know that’s right
Wasn’t it fun in the bath tonight?
The cold’s so cold, and the hot’s so hot
Oh! God Bless Daddy—I quite forgot.

If I open my fingers a little bit more
I can see Nanny’s dressing gown on the floor
It’s a beautiful blue, but it hasn’t a hood
Oh! God bless Nanny and make her good.

Mine has a hood and if I lie in bed
And put the hood right over my head
And I shut my eyes and curl up small
And nobody knows I am there at all.

Oh! Thank you God, for a lovely day
And what was the other I had to say?
I said “Bless Daddy” so what can it be?
Oh! Now I remember it. God Bless me.

Little boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on the little hands little gold head,
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

Alan Alexander Milne, (18 January 1882 to 31 January 1956) was the British author of the Winnie-the-Pooh books and a playwright. He wrote the poem Vespers for his wife, about their son, Christopher Robin, who was then aged 2 or 3. She sold the poem to Vanity Fair, in New York for $50, and the poem was first published in January 1923, becoming an immediate success. Christopher Robin detested the poem, describing it as “a wretched poem” that caused him “toe-curling, fist-clenching, lip-biting embarrassment.” Christopher Robin said that he took up boxing at school to protect himself against the bullies who taunted him about the poem. While he was serving with the Royal Engineers in the Middle East, Vera Lynn’s famous song of the poem was popular throughout the United Kingdom. A. A. Milne stopped writing the series of Winnie-the-Pooh books because of his “disgust” at the treatment of his son who featured as a character in the books.

Vera Lynn sings Vespers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEfsSZM_5Yw&t=68s

An Incantation Founded on the Northern Mythology from Runic Odes: Imitated from the Norse Tongue in the Manner of Mr Gray (1781)
 
By: Thomas James Mathias (c.1754-1835)

Hear, ye Rulers of the North,
Spirits of exalted worth;
By the silence of the night,
By subtle magic’s secret rite;
By Peolphan murky King,
Master of th’ enchanted ring;
By all and each of hell’s grim host,
Howling demon, tortur’d ghost;
By each spell and potent word
Burst from lips of Glauron’s Lord;
By Coronzon’s awful power;
By the dread and solemn hour,
When Gual fierce, and Hamad strong,
Stride the blast that roars along;
Or, in fell descending swoop,
Bid the furious spirit stoop
O’er desolation’s gloomy plain,
Haunt of warriors battle slain.
Now the world in sleep is laid,
Thorbiorga calls your aid.
 
Mark the sable feline coat,
Spotted girdle velvet-wrought;
Mark the skin of glistening snake,
Sleeping seiz’d in forest brake;
Mark the radiant crystal stone,
On which days Sovereign never shone,
From the cavern dark and deep
Digg’d i’ th’ hour of mortal sleep;
Mark the cross, in mystic round
Meetly o’er the sandal bound,
And the symbols grav’d thereon,
Holiest Tetragrammaton!
Now while midnight torches gleam,
Rivals of the Moon’s pale beam,
On ocean’s unfrequented shore
Some moss-grown ruin silvering o’er.
While the flame of resinous fire
Mounts aloft in curling spire;
I scatter round this charmed room,
The fragrance of the myrrh’s perfume;
And, bending o’er this consecrated sword,
confirm each murmur’d spell, each inly-thrilling word.
 
Thomas James Mathias (c.1754 - August 1835) was a British writer, and Italian scholar, translator, and satirist. Runic Odes: Imitated from the Norse Tongue in the Manner of Mr. Gray (London: T. Payne et al., 1781) was his first publication. The Incantation Founded on the Northern Mythology is written in the voice of Thorbiorga, the prophetess, and includes the imagery from cosmology, magic incantations and chants from Norse mythology. Some references in the Odes such as the names of many of the demons are not referred to in Norse mythology. Mathias was a Sub-Treasurer in the Queens Household and the Treasurer of Queen Anne’s Bounty. He was the Librarian at Buckingham Palace from 1812. He was described as “The best English Scholar in Italian since Milton”. He was also the author of Pursuits of Literature, which was a satire on contemporary writers, including Thomas Paine, and William Godwin. Mathias lived in Italy from 1817 until his death in Naples in about August 1835. For further information on Mathias see:  
https://romantic-circles.org/editions/norse/HTML/Mathias.html

The Sorceress; or Wolfwold and Ulla
 
By: William Julius Mickle (1734-1788)
 
  'Oh, how he lies; his cold pale cheek
              Lies lifeless on the clay;
    Yet struggling hope – O day spring break
              And lead me on my way.
 
    'On Denmark's cruel bands, O heaven!
              Thy red-wing'd vengeance pour;
    Before my Wolfwold's spear be driven –
              O rise bright morning hour!'
 
    Thus Ulla wail'd, the fairest maid,
              Of all the Saxon race;
    Thus Ulla wail'd, in nightly shade,
              While tears bedew'd her face.
 
    When sudden o'er the fir-crown'd hill,
              The full orb'd moon arose;
    And o'er the winding dale so still,
              Her silver radiance flows.
 
    No more could Ulla's fearful breast,
              Her anxious care delay;
    But deep with hope and fear imprest,
              She holds the moonshine way.
 
    She left the bower, and all alone
              She traced the dale so still;
    And sought the cave with rue o'ergrown,
              Beneath the fir-crown'd hill.
 
    Black knares of blasted oak, embound
              With hemlock, fenc'd the cell:
    The dreary mouth, half under ground,
              Yawn'd like the gate of hell.
 
    Soon as the gloomy den she spy'd,
             Cold horror shook her knee;
    And hear, O Prophetess, she cry'd,
              A Princess sue to thee.
 
    Aghast she stood! athwart the air,
              The dismal screech-owl flew;
    The fillet round her auburn hair
              Asunder burst in two.
 
    Her robe of softest yellow, glow'd
              Beneath the moon's pale beam;
    And o'er the ground with yew-boughs strew'd,
              Effus'd a golden gleam.
 
    The golden gleam the Sorceress spy'd,
              As in her deepest cell,
    At midnight's magic hour she try'd
              A tomb o'erpowering spell.
 
    When from the cavern's dreary womb,
              Her groaning voice arose,
    'O come, my daughter, fearless come,
              And fearless tell thy woes.'
 
    As shakes the bough of trembling leaf,
              When whirlwinds sudden rise:
    As stands aghast the warrior chief,
              When his base army flies.
 
    So shook, so stood, the beauteous maid,
              When from the dreary den,
    A wrinkled hag came forth, array'd
              In matted rags obscene.
 
    Around her brows, with hemlock bound,
              Loose hung her ash grey hair;
    As from two dreary caves profound
              Her blue flamed eye-balls glare.
 
    Her skin, of earthy red, appear'd
              Clung round her shoulder bones;
    Like wither'd bark, by light'ning fear'd
              When loud the tempest groans.
 
    A robe of squalid green and blue,
              Her ghostly length array'd,
    A gaping rent, full to the view
              Her furrow'd ribs betray'd.
 
    'And tell my daughter, fearless tell,
              What sorrow brought thee here?
    So may my power thy cares expel,
              And give thee sweetest cheer.'
 
    'O Mistress of the powerful spell,
              King Edric's daughter see,
    Northumbria to my father fell,
              And sorrow fell to me.
 
    'My virgin heart Lord Wolfwold won;
              My father on him smil'd
    Soon as he gain'd Northumbria's throne,
              His pride the youth exil'd.
 
    'Stern Denmark's ravens o'er the seas
              Their gloomy blackwings spread,
    And o'er Northumbria's hills and leas,
              Their dreadful squadrons sped.
 
    'Return brave Wolfwold, Edric cried,
              O generous warrior hear,
    My daughter's hand, thy willing bride,
              Awaits thy conquering spear.
 
    'The banish'd youth in Scotland's court,
              Had past the weary year;
    And soon he heard the glad report,
              And soon he grasp'd his spear.
 
    'He left the Scottish dames to weep,
              And wing'd with true love speed;
    Nor day, nor night, he stop'd to sleep,
              And soon he cross'd the Tweed.
 
    'With joyful voice, and raptur'd eyes,
              He press'd my willing hand;
    I go my Fair, my Love, he cries,
              To guard thy father's land.
 
    'By Edon's shore in deathful fray,
              The daring foe we meet,
    Ere three short days I trust to lay
              My trophies at thy feet.
 
    'Alas, alas, that time is o'er,
              And three long days beside,
    Yet not a word from Edon's shore,
              Has cheer'd his fearful bride.
 
    'O Mistress of the powerful spell,
              His doubtful fate decide;' –
    'And cease my child for all is well,'
              The grizly witch replied.
 
    'Approach my cave, and where I place
              The magic circle, stand
    And fear not ought of ghastly face,
              That glides beneath my wand.'
 
    The grizly witch's powerful charms,
              Then reach'd the labouring moon,
    And cloudless at the dire alarms,
              She saw her brightest noon.
 
    The pale beam struggles thro' the shade,
              That black'd the cavern's womb,
    And in the deepest nook betray'd
              An altar and a tomb.
 
    Around the tomb in mystic lore,
              Were forms of various mien,
    And efts, and foul wing'd serpents, bore
              The altar's base obscene.
 
    Eyeless, a huge and starv'd toad fat
              In corner murk aloof,
    And many a snake and famish'd bat
              Clung to the crevic'd roof.
 
    A fox and vultures' skeletons,
              A yawning rift betray'd;
    And grappling still each other's bones,
              The strife of death display'd.
 
    'And now my child, the Sorceress said,
              Lord Wolfwold's father's grave,
    To me shall render up the dead,
              And send him to my cave.
 
    'His skeleton shall hear my spell,
              And to the figur'd walls
    His hand of bone shall point and tell,
              What fate his Son befalls.'
 
    O cold down Ulla's snow like face,
              The trembling sweat drops fell,
    And borne by sprights of gliding pace,
              The corse approach'd the cell.
 
    And thrice the Witch her magic wand
              Wav'd o'er the skeleton;
    And slowly at the dream command,
              Up rose the arm of bone.
 
    A cloven shield and broken spear,
              The finger wander'd o'er,
    Then rested on a sable bier
              Distain'd with drops of gore.
 
    In ghastly writhes, her mouth so wide,
              And black the Sorceress throws,
    'And be those signs, my child,' she cries,
              'Fulfill'd on Wolfwold's foes.
 
    'A happier spell I now shall try;
              Attend, my child, attend,
    And mark what flames from altar high,
              And lowly floor ascend.
 
    'If of the rose's softest red,
              The blaze shines forth to view,
    Then Wolfwold lives – but Hell forbid
              The glimmering flame of blue!'
 
    The Witch then rais'd her haggard arm,
              And wav'd her wand on high;
    And while she spoke the mutter'd charm,
              Dark lightning fill'd her eye.
 
    Fair Ulla's knee swift smote the ground;
              Her hands aloft were spread,
    And every joint as marble bound,
              Felt horrors darkest dread.
 
    Her lips ere while so like the rose,
              Were now as vi'let pale,
    And tumbling in convulsive throes,
              Exprest o'erwhelming wail.
 
    Her eyes, ere while so starry bright,
              Where living lustre shone,
    Were now transform'd to sightless white,
              Like eyes of lifeless stone.
 
    And soon the dreadful spell was o'er,
              And glimmering to the view,
    The quivering flame rose thro' the floor
              A flame of ghastly blue.
 
    Behind the altar's livid fire,
              Low from the inmost cave,
    Young Wolfwold rose in pale attire,
              The vestments of the grave.
 
    His eye to Ulla's eye he rear'd,
              His cheek was wan as clay,
    And half cut thro' his hand appear'd
              That beckon'd her away.
 
    Fair Ulla saw the woeful shade
              Her heart struck at her side
    And burst – low bow'd her listless head,
              And down she sunk and died.
 
William Julius Mickel (earlier Meikle) was born on 29 September 1734 in Langholm, in Dumfrieshire, Scotland, the son of a minister, Rev Alexander Meikle who had been employed in the translation of Baye’s Dictionary and was Williams’ first teacher. After his father’s early death he lived with an Aunt, and her husband, an eminent brewer in Edinburgh. William became a brewer, but after the business failed and William became bankrupt in 1763, he worked in England for the Clarendon Press at Oxford. His literary career was marked by failures and some minor recognition, until his translation from Portuguese to English of the poem Lusiad, by Luis de Camoes for which he became well known and which gave him an income. He travelled to Portugal in 1777 where he was well received. His best known poem is “There’s nae luck aboot the Hoose”, although it has also been suggested the song was written by Jean Adam (1704-1765). He died on 28 October 1788 in Forest Hill.
 
There’s Nae Luck about the House, arr. By Gordon Langford  sung by The King’s Singers, 1985
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nXEtJEAO84

Night Scenes of Other Times
A Poem, in Three Parts
 
By: Joanna Baillie (1762-1851)
 
PART I.
 
"THE night winds bellow o'er my head
Dim grows the fading light;
Where shall I find some friendly shed
To screen me from the night?
 
"Ah! round me lies a desert vast,
No habitation near;
And dark and pathless is the waste
And fills my mind with fear.
 
"Thou distant tree, whose lonely top
Has bent to many a storm,
No more canst thou deceive my hope
And take my lover's form;
 
"For o'er thy head the dark cloud rolls,
Dark as thy blasted pride;
How deep the angry tempest growls
Along the mountain's side.
 
"Safely within the shaggy brake
Are couched the mountain deer;
A sound unbroken sleep they take;
No haunts of men are near.
 
"Beneath the fern the moorcock sleeps,
And twisted adders lie;
Back to his rock the night-bird creeps,
Nor gives his wonted cry.
 
"For angry spirits of the night
Ride on the troubled air,
And to their dens, in strange affright,
The beasts of prey repair.
 
"But thou, my love! where dost thou rest?
What shelter covers thee?
O may this cold and wintry blast
But only beat on me!
 
"Some friendly dwelling mayst thou find,
Where sleep may banish care
And thou feel not the chilly wind
That scatters Margaret's hair.
 
"Ah no! for thou didst give thy word
To meet me on the way:
Nor friendly roof nor social board
Will tempt a lover's stay.
 
"O raise thy voice if thou art near!
Its weakest sound were bliss;
What other sound my heart can cheer
In such a gloom as this?
 
"But from the hills with deafening roar
The dashing torrents fall,
And heavy beats the drifted shower,
And mock a lover's call.
 
"Ha! see, across the dreary waste,
A moving form appears,
It is my love, my cares are past;
How vain were all my fears!"
 
The form advanced, but sad and slow,
Not with a lover's tread;
And from his cheek the youthful glow
And greeting smile were fled.
 
Dim sadness sat upon his brow;
Fixed was his beamless eye;
His face was like a moon-light bow
Upon a wintry sky.
 
And fixed and ghastly to the sight
His strengthened features rose,
And bended was his graceful height,
And bloody were his clothes.
 
"My Margaret, calm thy troubled breast;
Thy sorrow now is vain;
Thy Edward from his peaceful rest
Shall ne'er return again.
 
"A treacherous friend has laid me low,
Has fixed my early doom,
And laid my corse with feigned woe
Beneath a vaunted tomb.
 
"To take thee to my home I sware,
And here we were to meet;
Wilt thou a narrow coffin share,
And part my winding sheet?
 
"But late the lord of many lands,
And now a grave is all:
My blood is warm upon his hands
Who revels in my hall.
 
"Yet think, thy father's hoary hair
Is watered with his tears;
He has but thee to soothe his care,
And prop his load of years.
 
"Remember Edward when he's gone
He only lived for thee;
And when thou art pensive and alone
Dear Margaret, call on me!
 
"Though deep beneath the mouldering clod
I rest my wounded head,
And terrible that call and loud
Which shall awake the dead!"
 
"No, Edward; I will follow thee,
And share thy hapless doom;
Companions shall our spirits be,
Though distant is thy tomb.
 
"O! never to my father's tower
Will I return again;
A bleeding heart has little power
To ease another's pain.
 
"Upon the wing my spirit flies,
I feel my course is run;
Nor shall these dim and weary eyes
Behold to-morrow's sun."
 
Like early dew, or hoary frost
Spent with the beaming day,
So shrunk the pale and watery ghost,
And dimly wore away.
 
No longer Margaret felt the storm,
She bowed her lovely head,
And, with her lover's fleeting form,
Her gentle spirit fled.
 
 
PART II.
 
"LOUD roars the wind that shakes the wall,
It is no common blast;
Deep hollow sounds pass through my hall:
O would the night were past!
 
"Methinks the demons of the air
Upon the turrets growl,
While down the empty winding stair
Their deepening murmurs roll.
 
"The glimmering fire cheers not the gloom,
Blue burns the quivering ray,
And, like a taper in a tomb,
But spreads the more dismay.
 
"Athwart its melancholy light
The lengthened shadow falls;
My grandsires to my troubled sight
Lower on me from these walls.
 
"Methinks yon angry warrior's head
Doth in its panel frown,
And dart a look, as if it said,
'Where hast thou laid my son?'
 
"But will these fancies never cease?
O would the night were run!
My troubled soul can find no peace
But with the morning sun,
 
"Vain hope! the guilty never rest;
Dismay is always near;
There is a midnight in the breast
No morn shall ever cheer.
 
"Now soundly sleeps the weary hind,
Though lowly lies his head;
An easy lair the guiltless find
Upon the hardest bed.
 
"The beggar, in his wretched haunt,
May now a monarch be;
Forget his woe, forget his want,
For all can sleep but me.
 
"I've dared whate'er the boldest can,
Then why this childish dread?
I never feared a living man,
And shall I fear the dead?
 
"No; whistling blasts may shake my tower,
And passing spirits scream:
Their shadowy arms are void of power,
And but a gloomy dream.
 
"But, lo! a form advancing slow
Across the dusky hall,
Art thou a friend? — art thou a foe?
O answer to my call!"
 
Still nearer to the glimmering light
The stately figure strode,
Till full, and horrid to the sight,
The murthered Edward stood.
 
A broken shaft his right hand swayed,
Like Time's dark, threatening dart,
And pointed to a rugged blade
That quivered in his heart.
 
The blood still trickled from his head,
And clotted was his hair;
His severed vesture stained and red;
His mangled breast was bare.
 
His face was like a muddy sky
Before the coming snow;
And dark and dreadful was his eye,
And cloudy was his brow.
 
Pale Conrad shrunk, but drew his sword —
Fear thrilled in every vein;
His quivering lips gave out no word;
He paused, and shrunk again.
 
Then utterance came — "At this dread hour
Why dost thou haunt the night?
Has the deep gloomy vault no power
To keep thee from my sight?
 
"Why dost thou glare and slowly wave
That fatal shaft of strife?
The deed is done, and from the grave
Who can recall to life?
 
"Why roll thine eyes beneath thy brow
Dark as the midnight storm?
What dost thou want? O let me know,
But hide thy dreadful form.
 
"I'd give the life-blood from my heart
To wash my crime away:
If thou a spirit art, depart,
Nor haunt a wretch of clay!
 
"Say, dost thou with the blessed dwell? —
Return and blessed be!
Or comest thou from the lowest hell? —
I am more cursed than thee."
 
The form advanced with solemn steps
As if it meant to speak,
And seemed to move its pallid lips,
But silence did not break.
 
Then sternly stalked with heavy pace
Which shook the floor and wall,
And turned away its fearful face,
And vanished from the hall.
 
Transfixed and powerless, Conrad stood;
Ears ring, and eyeballs swell;
Back to his heart runs the cold blood;
Into a trance he fell.
 
Night fled, and through the windows 'gan
The early light to play;
But on a more unhappy man
Ne'er shone the dawning day.
 
The gladsome sun all nature cheers,
But cannot charm his cares;
Still dwells his mind with gloomy fears,
And murdered Edward glares.
 
 
PART III.
 
"No rest nor comfort can I find:
I watch the midnight hour;
I sit and listen to the wind
That beats upon my tower.
 
"Methinks low voices from the ground
Break mournful on my ear,
And through these empty chambers sound
So dismal and so drear!
 
"The ghost of some departed friend
Doth in my sorrows share;
Or is it but the rushing wind
That mocketh my despair?
 
"Sad through the hall the pale lamp gleams
Upon my father's arms;
My soul is filled with gloomy dreams,
I fear unknown alarms.
 
"O, I have known this lonely place
With every blessing stored,
And many a friend with cheerful face
Sit smiling at my board!
 
"While round the hearth, in early bloom,
My harmless children played,
Who now within the narrow tomb
Are with their mother laid.
 
"Now sadly bends my wretched head,
And those I loved are gone:
My friends, my family, all are fled,
And I am left alone.
 
"Oft as the cheerless fire declines,
In it I sadly trace,
As lone I sit, the half-formed lines
Of many a much-loved face.
 
"But chiefly, Margaret, to my mind,
Thy lovely features rise;
I strive to think thee less unkind,
And wipe my streaming eyes.
 
"For only thee I had to vaunt,
Thou wert thy mother's pride;
She left thee like a shooting plant,
To screen my widowed side.
 
"But thou forsakest me, weak, forlorn,
And chilled with age's frost,
To count my weary days and mourn
The comforts I have lost.
 
"Unkindly child! why didst thou go?
O, had I known the truth!
Though Edward's father was my foe,
I would have blessed the youth.
 
"Could I but see that face again,
Whose smile calmed every strife,
And hear that voice which soothed my pain,
And made me wish for life!
 
"Thy harp hangs silent by the wall:
My nights are sad and long,
And thou art in a distant hall,
Where strangers raise the song.
 
"Ha! some delusion of the mind
My senses doth confound!
It is the harp, and not the wind,
That did so sweetly sound."
 
Old Arno rose all wan as death,
And turned his eager ear,
And checked the while his quickened breath
The sound again to hear.
 
When like a full, but distant choir,
The swelling notes returned;
And with the softly trembling wire
Surrounding echoes mourned;
 
Then softly whispered o'er the song
That Margaret loved to play,
Its well-known measure lingered long,
And faintly died away.
 
His dim-worn eyes to heaven he cast,
Where all his griefs were known,
And smote upon his troubled breast,
And heaved a heavy groan.
 
"I know it is my daughter's hand,
But 'tis no hand of clay;
And here a lonely wretch I stand,
All childless, bent, and grey.
 
"And art thou low, my lovely child,
And hast thou met thy doom,
And has thy flattering morning smiled,
To lead but to the tomb?
 
"O let me see thee ere we part,
For souls like thine are blest;
O let me fold thee to my heart,
If aught of form thou hast!
 
"This passing mist conceals thy shape,
But it is shrunk or flown;
Why dost thou from mine arms escape,
Art thou not still mine own?
 
"Thou'rt fled like the low evening breath,
That sighs upon the hill:
O stay! though in thy weeds of death, —
Thou art my daughter still."
 
Loud waked the sound, then fainter grew,
And long and sadly mourned,
And softly sighed a long adieu,
And never more returned.
 
Old Arno stretched him on the ground;
Thick as the gloom of night,
Death's misty shadows gathered round,
And swam before his sight.
 
He heaved a deep and deadly groan,
That rent his labouring breast,
And long before the morning shone,
His spirit was at rest.
 
Joanna Baillie was born on 11 September 1762 in Bothwell, Scotland. Her twin died at the time of her birth. Her father was a Presbyterian minister. Her uncles on her mother’s side were the Scottish physicians William and John Hunter. She was the niece of the poet Anne Home Hunter. She learned to read only from age 10, when she attended Miss McDonald’s boarding school. She was talented in mathematics and the arts. Her father died when she was 16 and the family’s financial position became critical. Her first publication was “Poems: Wherein it is Attempted to Describe Certain Views of Nature and of Rustic Manners” in 1790. She managed her brother’s household until 1791 when he married. She and her sister, who also never married, lived together for over 50 years. She wrote and published 27 plays and many poems, during her career. Once her identity as a writer became known in about 1800 she was introduced by her aunt to the London literary set. Joanne Baillie died on 23 February 1851 at Hampstead, in London. 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/joanna-baillie
 
“Witchcraft” by Joanna Baillie, produced as an online production by the Bay Area Women’s Theatre Festival, 15 March 2022 (during covid) 
“Witchcraft”
 
“Sweet Power of Song”, a poem by Joanna Baillie, performed to the Traditional Irish Air arranged by Beethoven, Julian Stocker (Tenor) and Gwion Thomas (Baritone), in an online performance 2022 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbyJGYbAQXA and performed in full on SoundCloud 
https://soundcloud.com/electricvoicetheatre/sweet-power-of-song-ludwig-van-beethoven-joanna-baillie

Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day
 
By: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
 
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
 
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), was an English playwright and poet. He was baptised in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford- upon-Avon on 26 April, 1564. He attended the King’s New School. He married Anne Hathaway at age 18. William Shakespeare is speculated to have worked as a country schoolmaster, law clerk, and soldier, although he was known as an actor and writer. In 1692 the public theatres in London were closed by order of the Privy Council due to a threat of plague, disrupting his work, however he continued to write. When the theatres reopened Shakespeare was working with the theatre troupe the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later the King’s Men. He also sought patronage from the aristocracy, although he continued his work commercially as a professional writer. Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 aged 52.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare
 
Sonnet 18, read by Sir John Gielgud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVtObfiCXVA
 
Sonnet 18, recited by Peter O’Toole, in the movie Venus (2006)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igy6cQM1DIs
 
Sonnet 18, read by Sir Patrick Stewart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYnj7ZutTgI

Holy Sonnet X: Death, Be Not proud
 
By: John Donne (c. 1572-1631)
 
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
 
John Donne, was born in 1571 or 1572. His family was Roman Catholic, a religion illegal in England, and they suffered great persecution. His father died when he was four years old. His mother was the daughter of a play- write, the sister of a Jesuit priest, and the great niece of Thomas More. From the age of 11 Donne studied at Oxford, and after three years, he was admitted to the University of Cambridge. As he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy he was not awarded a degree. He later converted to Protestantism in the 1590s given that advancement in society was dependant on adherence to the Church of England. Donne was an English poet, statesman, politician, soldier and priest. In 1601 he was briefly imprisoned, after secretly marrying 16 year old Lady Egerton, without the approval of his future father- in- law. In 1602 Donne was elected as an MP for Brackley. He had wealthy patrons and friends who supported him as a poet. In 1615 on the urging of King James he became an ordained priest of the Church of England. He was from 1621 the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, and well known for his sermons. He was known for his great love poems. He had 12 children, the last still-born, 5 days before the death of his wife. His poetry is described as metaphysical (from the Greek meta ta physika meaning “after the things of nature”). For Donne poetry was a means of exploring and expressing ideas experienced outside of ordinary human physical perception. He died on 31 March 1631 in London and is buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Donne
 
Sir John Gielgud reads Holy Sonnet X: Death, Be Not Proud. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A8mojwHjzU

Come, Rest Awhile
 
By: Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942)
 
Come, rest awhile, and let us idly stray
In glimmering valleys, cool and far away.

Come from the greedy mart, the troubled street,
And listen to the music, faint and sweet,

That echoes ever to a listening ear,
Unheard by those who will not pause to hear­

The wayward chimes of memory's pensive bells,
Wind-blown o'er misty hills and curtained dells.

One step aside and dewy buds unclose
The sweetness of the violet and the rose;

Song and romance still linger in the green,
Emblossomed ways by you so seldom seen,

And near at hand, would you but see them, lie
All lovely things beloved in days gone by.

You have forgotten what it is to smile
In your too busy life­come, rest awhile.

Lucy Maud (L.M.) Montgomery, a much loved Canadian poet and writer, was the author of Anne of Green Gables. She was born on 30 November 1874 in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Her parents ran the local post office out of their house. Her mother Clara died of tuberculosis at 23 years of age, before Maud turned two years of age. From the age of 10 she was cared for by her grandparents, and then aged 15, left school to care for her step-siblings when her father remarried. She submitted Anne of Green Gables to four publishers by 1904, when she was 30, and all rejected the work. She later married Rev. Ewen MacDonald, continuing writing poetry and articles. In 1908 Anne of Green Gables was published. She published her collection of poems, The Watchman and Other Poems in 1916, and published three small biographies Courageous Women in 1934. She is said to have written over one million works in her private journals during her life. She died on 24 April 1942 in Toronto, Ontario, and was buried in the Cavendish cemetery on Prince Edward Island.

Read the Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies, a collection of material from the L M Montgomery Institute’s 13th Biennial Conference in 2018, at:
https://journaloflmmontgomerystudies.ca/lmm-reading

Break of Day in the Trenches
 
By: Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)
 
The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe-
Just a little white with the dust.
 
Isaac Rosenberg was born in Bristol, England in 1890. His family, which had fled Lithuania, then settled in Stepney, London in 1897. His family’s financial situation was described by Rosenberg’s biographer, Jan Wilson as “an existence on the edge of destitution”. At school he was noticed to be a skilled writer and artist. Much of his early artwork was drawn in chalk on the pavements of the East End. He was made to leave school at 14 to be an apprentice engraver, work he described as being “chained to this fiendish mangling- machine when my days are full of vigour and my hands and soul craving for self – expression”. He was later noticed drawing at the National Gallery and benefactors paid then for his education. He suffered from feelings of great inadequacy although he was described by some as self-reliant, modest, independent and sensitive. His first poems were published as “Night and Day.” In October 1915 he joined the army, taking with him a copy of John Donne’s poems, and not telling his family that he had enlisted. He endured great deprivation in extreme conditions, and anti-semitism. He wrote on scraps of paper his poems which he sent home to his sister to type. His greatest poems were considered to be Dead Man’s Dump and Break of Day in the Trenches, first published in Poetry magazine. Rosenberg was killed in April 1918 while on patrol, on the western front, during the German spring offensive in the closing months of the First World War. Isaac Rosenberg is remembered with a plaque in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, where other revered writers such as Shakespeare, Dickens and Emily Bronte are commemorated. Prof. Bergonzi rated Rosenberg as “undoubtedly one of the finest poets that the Great War produced”.
 
Jeremy Vine, British TV and radio presenter, reads Isaac Rosenberg’s Break of Day in the Trenches 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPakEd0Ul3Q

If We Must Die
 
By: Claude McKay (1890-1948)
 
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
 
Festus Claudius “Claude” McKay, (September 15, 1890 - May 22, 1948) was an American poet, born in Jamaica, West Indies. He was the son of landed farmers, brought up in the Baptist church. From the age of 9 he was sent to live with his brother, a teacher, who advanced Claude’s education. McKay wrote poetry from the age of 10. He was an apprentice carpenter. Encouraged to continue his writing, he studied in the USA, from 1912, at Tuskefee University in South Carolina, where he was shocked by segregation and the discrimination he experienced. In early 1919 McKay travelled to London, in 1922 to Russia, and in 1937 to Morocco. He was one of the central writers in the Harlem Renaissance Movement, when black music, writing, politics, intellectual thought and art flourished in Harlem. McKay wrote poetry that explored racial pride and black identity in an era of huge discrimination. Alain Lock described the era as “a spiritual coming of age”. If We Must Die was written in response to the riots and lynchings in southern USA after the First World War and was a call to rise up against the oppression and murder of blacks. McKay wrote five novels and four collections of poetry. He died in Chicago, USA in 1948. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_McKay
 
Kevin Young, editor of the Library of America Anthology “African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song” reads Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovjB8VIMuvc
 
Claude McKay, recites his poem “If We Must Die”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nrbwagWcrs

A Maori Love Song
 
By: Rakapa of Otaki, Rotorua (Mid-19th century)
 
See yonder curling clouds ascend
From Hinemutu's springs—
Like those soft mists
Arise my loving sighs for thee!
My soul springs forth in tears
That dim my eyes
And rolling flood my cheeks;
Like gushing water-founts they come,
And in my lonely sleep
The choking sobs are loosed
And all my heart goes forth to thee.

What parts us twain?
Is it the tapu's spell?
'Tis but an empty name,
Light as the western breeze.
My love will pass all bounds,
Time, space and thought;
My heart flies forth to thee—
And yet 'tis all in vain!
We dwell apart!
 
Written from the oral tradition of the original Maori and English translation.
 
Rakapa composed poetry and song in the mid-19th century. Two famous pieces are waiata-aroha composed for her distant lover Petera whom she later married. Maori culture developed a wealth and depth of poetry, recited and sung, including scared charms, canoe- chants, ritual chants and poems with themes of love, tradition, folk-lore, war, death, history, including recitation of genealogical links, and nature.
Maori poetry - Wikipedia.

An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966 has further information:
Literary Forms – 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand – Te Ara

An example of Maori poetry in song and chant, see Te Rangiura o Wairarapa,  Te Matatini,  2023, Whakaeke, 
Te Rangiura o Wairarapa | Te Matatini 2023 | Whakaeke - YouTube

For an example of modern Maori poetry and song watch “Mareikura” a modern Maori Quartet perform their own composition in 2017:
Modern Maori Quartet - 'Mareikura' live at RNZ - YouTube

Oh, my love is like a red red rose
 
By: Robert Burns (1759-1796)
 
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.
 
(Oh) My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, is a song curated by Robbie Burns, as part of a Scotts anthology, Original Scottish Airs, published in 1794, based on a traditional Scottish song. Burns wrote of the song, and of a disagreement with the publisher, "What to me appears to be the simple and the wild, to him, and I suspect to you likewise, will be looked on as the ludicrous and the absurd." The poem was set to music by Robert Schumann. It was sung by Carly Simon, Pat Boone and many others. Bob Dylan referred to the lyrics of Red Red Rose by Robert Burns as the most important and inspirational to him in his music.
 
Robbie Burns (25 January 1759 - 21 July 1796) is regarded as the national poet of Scotland and an icon of Scotts culture. He was born in Ayr, Alloway, the eldest of seven children to a tenant farmer and his wife Agnes, the daughter of a tenant farmer. The family lived in poverty, doing heavy manual labour on the tenanted farms. Burns’ father educated the children. Robbie Burns also attended some irregular formal schooling, which was disrupted by work on the tenanted farms, such as returning home for harvest. He was a poet and lyricist, and collector of Scottish folk songs. Burns died at the age of 37. The descendants of Robbie Burns are said to number over 900 people (as at 2019). 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns
 
The King’s Singers, 2015, perform Oh my love is like a red, red rose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBE1y7u_dBs
 
Bryn Terfel, with the London Symphony orchestra, sings My love is Like a Red, Red Rose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fykWcBWgsTE

a small leaf
 
By: Catherine Vidler (1973-2023)
 
a small leaf :: water-baubles sweetly 
trembling :: just there :: like liquid glass 
on veined-foundation :: one two threely ::
more :: space surrounds :: lively :: quiesc- 
ent :: behind my sheer transfixed eyelid ::
reaching clear-through the dark & turbid ::
such shining :: curvaceous & full 
under a breeze’s push & pull ::
so robust & so delicately ::
light & dark :: also in between ::
a teeming like I’ve never seen 
within clear membrane :: intricately 
world-full & otherworldly too :: 
so tiny :: ancient & brand new 
                                 :::
I’ve lost my way :: the sky is greyly :: 
slight smears upon the looking glass :: 
this separation from the daily 
trajectory :: it comes :: it pass- 
es :: where are you :: sweet jacaranda 
shedding of blossom :: sea & sand are 
making their own map over there ::
or closer still :: this charged-up air 
alights upon my naked flesh :: so 
briefly tender :: it flits & flies 
between the lowlies & the highs ::
trembling before the burning threshold ::
close me my eyes & search the light-
streaked darkness here :: inside-of sight
 
Catherine Vidler, (1973-2023),  was the editor of Benchmark from August 2012 to November 2021, returning in early 2023 as a contributing editor. Catherine is a published poet whose work has appeared in literary magazines in Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK. She was a co-founder and editor, from 2005, of Snorkel, a trans- Tasman literary magazine. Her works include Matchstick Poems (2022), Wings (2021), Lost Sonnets (2018),  78 composite lost sonnets (2018), Table sets (2017), Chaingrass, (2016), Chaingrass errata slips (2017), Furious Triangle (2011), Cloud Theory (2007), and Canberra Poems. Catherine was talented and intelligent, interesting, encouraging, always surprising and our beautiful friend and colleague. She was brave and resilient during her long illness.

A selection of poems

By: Murasaki Shikibu (c.978-c.1014)

My place in the world:
why should it bring me grief?
mountain cherry
blossom in my sight,
were it ever so…

            ***

 If I were to vanish away, 
would you come 
seeking my name 
even unto 
the grave?

            ***

As life flows on, 
who will ever read it--
this keepsake to her
whose memory 
will never die?


Murasaki Shikibu, (possibly born Fuijwara No Kaoriko), born c.978, in Kyoto, Japan, during the Heian Period. She is believed to have lived at court after the death of her husband, as an imperial lady in waiting to Empress Shoshi, who she entertained with her poetry and stories. Murasaki Shikibu was fluent in the Chinese classics. She wrote The Tale of Genji between 1000 and 1012, considered to be the world’s first full novel. Tale of Genji is considered the greatest work of Japanese literature and has inspired art and theatre. She also wrote The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Her work of 128 poems Poetic Memories, considered generally biographical have been passed down over the centuries. She wrote poetry in the waka form, which preceded the Japanese form of haiku. Waka form is 5 lines with the sounds or syllables in the pattern by line of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. The haiku pattern by comparison is three lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables or sounds. Murasaki Shikibu died between about 1014 and 1031.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murasaki_Shikibu
 
Listen to The Tale of Genji, translated by Suematsu Kencho (1855-1920), and read by Moira Fogarty, over 9 hours, a LibriVox Audiobook, which is in the public domain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR58kLrp88o

Requiescat
 
By: Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
 
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
 
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
 
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
 
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life’s buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
 
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 and died, aged 46 of meningitis on 30 November 1900. He was an Irish novelist and playwright, a great wit, essayist and poet. The poem Requiescat was written for his sister Isola Wilde, who died of a fever when she was just nine years old. Wilde was 12 years old at the time and his diaries show that he was greatly affected by her death. Wilde studied at Trinity College Dublin and Magdalen College Oxford. He then moved to London. He toured North America in 1882 and France in 1883. He was one of the best-known writers in 1890s London. Wilde’s well known novels include The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Importance of Being Earnest. He famously sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel, and having lost that case, was himself charged. The transcript of the trial is at https://www.famous-trials.com/wilde/330-libel. Oscar Wilde was imprisoned from 1895 to 1897 and during that time he wrote De Profundis. After his release from prison, he moved to France, and did not return to Britain or Ireland again. His poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, reflected on capital punishment and prison. Oscar Wilde’s last words were said to have been: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go”.
 
Requiescat, sung by the quartet of Grover, Menter, Bishop and Tharaldson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eoJKvyJxkI
 
Stephen Fry, as Oscar Wilde, in Wilde, (1997) 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwhYn-P7hLg
 
Stephen Fry, reciting the Ballad of Reading Gaol, in Wilde, (1997) 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMQK0aWpAPY

Jabberwocky
 
By: Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
 
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.
 
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
      The frumious Bandersnatch!”
 
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
      Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
      And stood awhile in thought.
 
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
      And burbled as it came!
 
One, two! One, two! And through and through
      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
      He went galumphing back.
 
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
      He chortled in his joy.
 
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.
 
 
Jabberwocky,  a nonsense poem, was included in Lewis Carroll’s 1871 novel Through the Looking- Glass, the story of Alice’s adventures in Looking-glass World. Nonsense verse, usually included words that are made up, and verse which is light-hearted and amusing, with fantasy characters, and not restrained by common views of what is rational expression. GK Chesterton described nonsense verse as “lawless and innocent”. Jabberwocky included the made-up word “chortle”, since then absorbed into daily speech.
Jabberwocky
 
Lewis Carroll is the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an English poet, author, academic and mathematician born on 27 January 1832. His education was at home until being enrolled at Rugby School. He with other young boys was bullied at Rugby, a school which he found to be a torture. Charles’ nephew later wrote about his protection of other young boys at Rugby that “even though it is hard for those who have only known him as the gentle and retiring don to believe it, it is nevertheless true that long after he left school, his name was remembered as that of a boy who knew well how to use his fists in defence of a righteous cause”. He spent most of his life at Christ Church College, Oxford. He excelled at mathematics and wrote 11 books on mathematics during his life.  Throughout his life he had health problems, including epilepsy, deafness and migraines. His most famous work is Alice in Wonderland. His published work included 12 books of fiction. He died on 14 January 1898.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll
 
Benedict Cumberbatch reads Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Um3787fSY
 
Sir John Gielgud reads Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjOj970ZJC8

A Great Yogi
 
By: Mirabai (1498-1547)
 
In my travels I spent time with a great yogi.
Once he said to me
“Become so still you hear the blood flowing
through your veins.”

One night as I sat in quiet,
I seemed on the verge of entering a world inside so vast
I know it is the source of
all of
us.
 
Mirabai, also known as Meera, and later Sant Meerabai, was a Hindu poet from the 1500s. She was born in 1498 in Kurki, (Rajasthan) India into the Rajput royal family. She was a devoted follower of Sri Krishna and wrote devotional songs, known as bhajans. Her devotion led to friction within her family. It is said that her family attempted to murder her many times to silence her, although biographies during the century after her death make no mention of those attempts, and the reports may be untrue. She became famous across northern India. She was considered a saint. It is said that the Moghul Emperor Akbar, visited her, disguised as a beggar, so as to avoid conflict with Mirabai’s Rajput royal family who were his enemies. Mirabai died in 1547 in Dwarka, India. Her life has been the subject of films and literature.
 
Mirabai devotional songs, sung by Lata Mangeshkar, “Gadh Se To Meerabai Utri” 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN64AQXupKw

Inferno Canto 26 - Ulysses’ Last Voyage
 
from The Divine Comedy --
The Vision; or Hell,
Purgatory, and Paradise,
 
By: Dante Alghieri (1265-1321) - translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 
Rejoice, O Florence, since thou art so great,
    That over sea and land thou beatest thy wings,
    And throughout Hell thy name is spread abroad!
 
Among the thieves five citizens of thine
    Like these I found, whence shame comes unto me,
    And thou thereby to no great honour risest.
 
But if when morn is near our dreams are true,
    Feel shalt thou in a little time from now
    What Prato, if none other, craves for thee.
 
And if it now were, it were not too soon;
    Would that it were, seeing it needs must be,
    For ’twill aggrieve me more the more I age.
 
We went our way, and up along the stairs
    The bourns had made us to descend before,
    Remounted my Conductor and drew me.
 
And following the solitary path
    Among the rocks and ridges of the crag,
    The foot without the hand sped not at all.
 
Then sorrowed I, and sorrow now again,
    When I direct my mind to what I saw,
    And more my genius curb than I am wont,
 
That it may run not unless virtue guide it;
    So that if some good star, or better thing,
    Have given me good, I may myself not grudge it.
 
As many as the hind (who on the hill
    Rests at the time when he who lights the world
    His countenance keeps least concealed from us,
 
While as the fly gives place unto the gnat)
    Seeth the glow-worms down along the valley,
    Perchance there where he ploughs and makes his vintage;
 
With flames as manifold resplendent all
    Was the eighth Bolgia, as I grew aware
    As soon as I was where the depth appeared.
 
And such as he who with the bears avenged him
    Beheld Elijah’s chariot at departing,
    What time the steeds to heaven erect uprose,
 
For with his eye he could not follow it
    So as to see aught else than flame alone,
    Even as a little cloud ascending upward,
 
Thus each along the gorge of the intrenchment
    Was moving; for not one reveals the theft,
    And every flame a sinner steals away.
 
I stood upon the bridge uprisen to see,
    So that, if I had seized not on a rock,
    Down had I fallen without being pushed.
 
And the Leader, who beheld me so attent,
    Exclaimed: “Within the fires the spirits are;
    Each swathes himself with that wherewith he burns.”
 
“My Master,” I replied, “by hearing thee
    I am more sure; but I surmised already
    It might be so, and already wished to ask thee
 
Who is within that fire, which comes so cleft
    At top, it seems uprising from the pyre
    Where was Eteocles with his brother placed.”
 
He answered me: “Within there are tormented
    Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together
    They unto vengeance run as unto wrath.
 
And there within their flame do they lament
    The ambush of the horse, which made the door
    Whence issued forth the Romans’ gentle seed;
 
Therein is wept the craft, for which being dead
    Deidamia still deplores Achilles,
    And pain for the Palladium there is borne.”
 
“If they within those sparks possess the power
    To speak,” I said, “thee, Master, much I pray,
    And re-pray, that the prayer be worth a thousand,
 
That thou make no denial of awaiting
    Until the horned flame shall hither come;
    Thou seest that with desire I lean towards it.”
 
And he to me: “Worthy is thy entreaty
    Of much applause, and therefore I accept it;
    But take heed that thy tongue restrain itself.
 
Leave me to speak, because I have conceived
    That which thou wishest; for they might disdain
    Perchance, since they were Greeks, discourse of thine.”
 
When now the flame had come unto that point,
    Where to my Leader it seemed time and place,
    After this fashion did I hear him speak:
 
“O ye, who are twofold within one fire,
    If I deserved of you, while I was living,
    If I deserved of you or much or little
 
When in the world I wrote the lofty verses,
    Do not move on, but one of you declare
    Whither, being lost, he went away to die.”
 
Then of the antique flame the greater horn,
    Murmuring, began to wave itself about
    Even as a flame doth which the wind fatigues.
 
Thereafterward, the summit to and fro
    Moving as if it were the tongue that spake,
    It uttered forth a voice, and said: “When I
 
From Circe had departed, who concealed me
    More than a year there near unto Gaeta,
    Or ever yet Aeneas named it so,
 
Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
    For my old father, nor the due affection
    Which joyous should have made Penelope,
 
Could overcome within me the desire
    I had to be experienced of the world,
    And of the vice and virtue of mankind;
 
But I put forth on the high open sea
    With one sole ship, and that small company
    By which I never had deserted been.
 
Both of the shores I saw as far as Spain,
    Far as Morocco, and the isle of Sardes,
    And the others which that sea bathes round about.
 
I and my company were old and slow
    When at that narrow passage we arrived
    Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals,
 
That man no farther onward should adventure.
    On the right hand behind me left I Seville,
    And on the other already had left Ceuta.
 
‘O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand
    Perils,’ I said, ‘have come unto the West,
    To this so inconsiderable vigil
 
Which is remaining of your senses still
    Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge,
    Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.
 
Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;
    Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,
    But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.’
 
So eager did I render my companions,
    With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,
    That then I hardly could have held them back.
 
And having turned our stern unto the morning,
    We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,
    Evermore gaining on the larboard side.
 
Already all the stars of the other pole
    The night beheld, and ours so very low
    It did not rise above the ocean floor.
 
Five times rekindled and as many quenched
    Had been the splendour underneath the moon,
    Since we had entered into the deep pass,
 
When there appeared to us a mountain, dim
    From distance, and it seemed to me so high
    As I had never any one beheld.
 
Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping;
    For out of the new land a whirlwind rose,
    And smote upon the fore part of the ship.
 
Three times it made her whirl with all the waters,
    At the fourth time it made the stern uplift,
    And the prow downward go, as pleased Another,
Until the sea above us closed again.”
 
 
Dante Alighieri, was born around 1265, in Florence, in the then Republic of Florence (now Italy). His mother died when he was 10 years old. He was an Italian poet, political activist, pharmacist, admitted to the Apothecaries’ Guild, and a philosopher. His political actions involved fighting in disputes, usually turning around the role of the Papacy, and between warring families. He became the prior of Florence in 1302. He was exiled from Florence for two years, from March 1302, but then after not paying the fine, condemned to be in perpetual exile. Had he entered Florence the punishment may have been burning at the stage. Dante wrote the Divine Comedy beginning at around the age of 35 years, which described his travels through Hell, Purgatory, and then to Paradise. The Divine Comedy is considered one of the most prominent works of the Middle Ages, and one of the works that established the use of a type of modern Italian language, breaking away from the tradition to write only in Latin. His aim was that his poetry might be read by the common person. Dante died in Ravena on 14 September 1321, aged 56, while still in exile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri
 
Dante’s Inferno, from the Divine Comedy, Silent film, 1911,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VszV6gEkgHk
 
Dante’s Inferno Canto XXVI, recited by Italian Actor and comedian Roberto Benigni,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOkgT1iEp0A

Roberto Benigni, won Oscars for Best Actor and Best Foreign Language Film at the 1999 Academy Awards for the movie Life is Beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cTR6fk8frs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybgg4H4zTHo
 
Dr Brendan Case, of the Harvard University Flourishing Project, speaks about Canto 26 of Dante’s Inferno,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kys-6X2AkKk

In memory of Dr Brian McDonald, who died on 6 April 2023, aged 71 years. Dr McDonald was a renowned molecular geneticist and DNA expert.
He was a scientist of great courage, intelligence, insight and humour. We doubt that Dr McDonald would have suffered the same conflicts as Edgar Allan Poe expresses in Sonnet-To Science.

Sonnet-To Science
 
By: Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)
 
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
 
 
Edgar Allan Poe (19 January 1809 – 7 October 1849) was an American poet, literary critic and writer of short stories. He is said to have invented the genre of the detective story. He also wrote works in the genre of Gothic horror. His work was intended to appeal to the mass- market. He attended the University of Virginia. He had a career in the military and graduated from West Point. Sonnet to Science was published in 1829. After his death his reputation was tarnished by Rufus Girswold, a literary rival, who, became Poe’s literary executor. Letters which Griswold relied on to destroy Poe’s reputation were later found to be forgeries.

Where Cotter Died
 
By: Major Oliver Hogue, “Trooper Bluegum” (1880-1919)
 
Comrade of knapsack or bandolier,
Tread light, we pray when you pass this way;
For sake of the brave ones slumbering here
Nameless in death till the Judgment Day
Tread light, lest the tramp of your martial host
Or the rattle of rifle or bayonet blade
Should ring down the night to their silent post,
And rouse them too soon for the Grand Parade.
 
Oliver Hogue, was born on 29 April 1880 in Sydney. He attended Forest Lodge Public School. He cycled around the eastern and northern areas of Australia, riding his bike for thousands of kilometres. He was a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald from 1907. He enlisted in 1914 in the Australian Imperial Force, and served in Gallipoli with the Light Horse Regiment.  He also served with the Camel Corps from November 1916. He published poetry, usually under the pseudonym “Trooper Bluegum”, in the Sydney Morning Herald.  He left a book of poetry and writings written during the campaigns in Egypt and Palestine. This poem, Where Cotter Died, relates to the death of soldier Tibby/Tibbie Cotter.  Hogue wrote “It was round Beersheba that Tibbie Cotter was killed, with many more Light Horsemen and Cameliers. There are rough wooden crosses dotting the land… some bear the names of comrades; some are nameless”. The book “The Cameliers” by Oliver Hogue was also published after the First World War. Major Oliver Hogue survived the war, but died of influenza on 3 March 1919 at London General Hospital. His twin sister predeceased him in 1918. Bertram Stevens wrote of Hogue’s letters that they  “conveyed a good deal of the happy-go-lucky spirit of the Australians, their indifference to danger, and laughter when in difficulties or in pain”.
https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/P11013263
 
Albert (Tibby/Tibbie) Cotter had attended Forest Lodge Public School and Sydney Grammar. He had, as a cricketer, played against England. He served at Gallipoli. He survived the Light Horse charge to capture the wells of Beersheba. He died on 31 October 1917 when he was a mounted stretcher-bearer at the Battle of Gaza.
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cotter-albert-tibby-5785
 

To My Dear and Loving Husband
  
By: Anne Dudley Bradstreet (1612-1672)
  
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Of all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever.
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
  
Anne Dudley Bradstreet, born 8 March 1612, in Northampton England, was the first English poet to be published in the New World (North America). She was well educated by her father Thomas, who was described as a “devourer of books”. He was the steward to the Earl of Lincoln from 1619 to 1630 and Anne Bradstreet read in the Earl’s library. She studied languages, theology, politics, philosophy, history, medicine, and literature. In the Elizabethan Era education for women was valued. She married at 16 to Simon Bradstreet. She immigrated to the New World with her parents and husband in 1630 and had 8 children. The Bradstreets were one of the most prominent Puritan families in the New World. Her father and husband were at different times governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her poetry suggests that she rebelled somewhat against the Puritan life in New England and questioned her faith. Her poetry deals with the issues of death, her role in the world, salvation, and eternal life, while living in a time when her compatriots in the frontier towns of the New England area were experiencing great poverty, hunger, disease, and early death, including in childbirth. Anne Bradstreet also wrote poems to her husband, describing their great love. She and other female Puritan writers faced opposition from some members of the clergy.
 
King George III was said to have had a copy of Anne Bradstreet’s book of poetry, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America, published in 1650, in his library. The book was included in 1658 in the Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England. Anne Dudley Bradstreet died on 16 September 1672, in Andover, Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1692, her son, Dudley Bradstreet, a Justice of the Peace for the Essex County, refused to issue any further warrants for the arrest of “witches” during the Salem witch trials, and as a result was himself accused of witchcraft and murder, with his wife Anne. After going into hiding, for a period, he later returned and was a Justice of the General Court of Boston.
  
Alyssa Milano, actress, reads “To My Dear and Loving Husband”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQRMbJmx5g
 
Dame Helen Mirren reads “To My Dear and Loving Husband
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU82qY6etWw

Ode to a Nightingale
 
 
By: John Keats (1795-1821)
 
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
 
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
 
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
 
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
 
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
 
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
 
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
 
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
 
 
John Keats, an English poet, was born 31 October 1795, in Moorgate, London, and died of tuberculosis, at the age of 25 on 23 February 1821 in Rome, Papal States (Italy). His father died in 1804 after an accident when his horse faltered and he fell suffering a head injury. His mother died of tuberculosis when Keats was only 14.  His brother also died of tuberculosis. After his father’s death the family lost most of its inheritance to the actions of a trustee, who only after Keats’s death, came to a settlement with his sister Fanny.  Keats trained to be a surgeon. He was considered later to have been a poet of the later Romantic period.  He only published 54 poems. His most famous were the Odes, including Ode on a Grecian Urn. Ode to a Nightingale represents the cycle of nature and death. The poem was written by Keats in only a couple of hours.  He was subject to criticism by some of his contemporaries for his style of writing, and perhaps due to his background. Of his death, his friend Joseph Severn, an English painter, who remained by his side wrote: "He told me not to tremble for he did not think he would be convulsed – he said. Did you see anyone die ? no ? well then I pity you poor Severn ? what trouble you have got into for me. Now you must be firm for it will not last long ? I shall soon be laid in a quiet grave."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats
 
Stephen Fry reads Ode to a Nightingale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKVNJH0SbUM
 
Benedict Cumberbatch recites Ode to a Nightingale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pkQYLVqBms
 
Mathew Coulton recites Ode to a Nightingale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1KH60CenMM

Annabel Lee
  
By: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1848)
 
It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.
 
I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
   I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
   Coveted her and me.
 
And this was the reason that, long ago,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea.
 
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
   Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
   In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
 
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we—
   Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
   Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
 
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea—
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.
 
 
Edgar Allan Poe, was born on 19 January 1809, in Boston, the son of two actors. His father left the family in 1810, and his mother died in 1811. He was taken in by a couple who raised him. He was an American author and poet, and literary journal writer. He was a writer of crime stories, mysteries, and is said to have inspired many, including for example, Alfred Hitchcock in the making of suspense films. He was one of the first American writers whose works became popular on the European continent, and more particularly in France. His literary reviews earned him the name “tomahawk man”. His first poetry volume under the pseudonym “the Bostonian” was published in 1827. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said of Poe’s detective stories that each story “Is a root from which a whole literature developed” and said:  “Where was the detective story until Poe Breathed the beath of life into it”. His poem “The Raven” was received well when published in January 1845. Poe wrote “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality”. In his letter to George W. Evelath on 4 January 1848 he wrote “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity”. Poe died 7 October 1849. His attending doctor reported that Poe’s final words were “Lord help my poor soul”. The cause of death is not clearly known, however there were many suggestions, including a possibly physical attack on him, or alcoholism, or cholera or various other diseases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
 
Joan Baez, sings Annabel Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIGj3CZ3uPQ
 
The Raven, read by James Earl Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcqPQXqQXzI

An Hymn To The Morning
 
By: Harriet Tubman (1820-1913)
 
Attend my lays, ye ever honour'd nine,
Assist my labours, and my strains refine;
In smoothest numbers pour the notes along,
For bright Aurora now demands my song.
 Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies,
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays,
On ev'ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays;
Harmonious lays the feather'd race resume,
Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.
 Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display
To shield your poet from the burning day:
Calliope awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire:
The bow'rs, the gales, the variegated skies
In all their pleasures in my bosom rise.
 See in the east th' illustrious king of day!
His rising radiance drives the shades away-
But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong,
And scarce begun, concludes th' abortive song.
 
Harriet Tubman, was born Araminta Ross, in 1820 or 1822, in Maryland and died in 1915. Her grandparents in 1745 had been captured in west Africa and transported to America to work as slaves. She was born a slave, and sent out as a domestic servant at the age of 5. Even as a child she fought back against the abuse she suffered. In protecting another slave from a beating when she was 12 years old, she suffered a significant head injury from a 2 pound metal weight which hit her head, leaving her with severe headaches throughout her life. It also led, she believed, to her seeing visions She married John Tubman, a free black man, in 1844. She became ill in September 1849 and was to be sold by her master.  She prayed for weeks to not be sold, but then said "I changed my prayer. First of March I began to Pay "Oh Lord, if you aint never going to change that man’s heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way”. A week later the master died. Harriet Tubman and her two brothers tried to escape north, returning the first time to the South, but with her then travelling alone on a second journey using the Underground Railroad in 1849. Her husband refused to travel north. She said "I had reasoned out this in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have de other". As she was leaving, she sang this song, to say goodbye to the others remaining on the plantation:
When dat ole’ chariot comes
I’m gwine to leave you
I’m bound for the Promised Land
Friends, I’m gwine to leave you.

I’m sorry, friends, to leave you,
Farewell! Oh farewell,
But I’ll meet you in de morning
Farewell, oh farewell.
 
Harriet returned several times to the south and it is believed that she helped around 80 slaves travel to freedom. She was called "the Moses of Her People" She had a $40,000 reward on her head. She established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged. She received from Queen Victoria a Silver Jubilee medal, after Queen Victoria read her biography. Harriet Tubman died in 1913 at the age of 93. She was buried at Fort Hill cemetery in Auburn, New York, with full military honours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman

Brumby’s Run

By: A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson (1864-1941), published 13 January 1894 in The Bulletin.
 
It lies beyond the Western Pines
    Towards the sinking sun,
And not a survey mark defines
    The bounds of “Brumby’s Run”.
 
On odds and ends of mountain land,
    On tracks of range and rock
Where no one else can make a stand,
    Old Brumby rears his stock.
 
A wild, unhandled lot they are
    Of every shape and breed.
They venture out ‘neath moon and star
    Along the flats to feed;
 
But when the dawn makes pink the sky
    And steals along the plain,
The Brumby horses turn and fly
    Towards the hills again.
 
The traveller by the mountain-track
    May hear their hoof-beats pass,
And catch a glimpse of brown and black
  Dim shadows on the grass.
 
The eager stockhorse pricks his ears
    And lifts his head on high
In wild excitement when he hears
    The Brumby mob go by.
 
Old Brumby asks no price or fee
    O’er all his wide domains:
The man who yards his stock is free
    To keep them for his pains.
 
So, off to scour the mountain-side
    With eager eyes aglow,
To strongholds where the wild mobs hide
    The gully-rakers go.
 
A rush of horses through the trees,
    A red shirt making play;
A sound of stockwhips on the breeze,
    They vanish far away!
 
Ah, me! before our day is done
    To ride once more on Brumby’s Run
    And yard his mob again.
We long with bitter pain
 
 
Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson, was born on 17 February 1864, near Orange. He died on 5 February 1941, in Sydney. A.B. Paterson was a journalist, bush poet, lawyer and author. His early years were spent living on properties in NSW and he was familiar with the scenes that he later described in his bush ballads. He attended Sydney Grammar School, for a couple of years, leaving when he was 16. The library at that school was later named after him. Paterson was a law clerk at the firm Herbert Salwey and admitted to practise in 1886. His earliest poems were published in the Bulletin from when he was 21 years of age. Paterson often wrote using the pseudonym “the Banjo.”  In the Second Boer War he was a war correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. He was the editor of the Sydney Evening News and the Sydney Sportsman. He was an ambulance driver, horse trainer, and commissioned as a Captain, and later promoted to Major during World War 1. He served in Egypt.  later farmed 40,000 acres near Yass. His image is on the $10 note. In 1983 a recording by Slim Dusty of Paterson’s bush ballad, Waltzing Matilda, was beamed from the spaceship Columbia as it passed over Australia. His other best-known poems include Clancy of the Overflow and The Man from Snowy River.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjo_Paterson
 
Johnny Cash sings Waltzing Matilda, words by A.B. Paterson,
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL4v7UrqcF4
 
“Brumby’s Run, read by Alwyn Kurts, in “Banjo’s Australia - The Poems of A.B. Paterson”, 1987, narrated by Charles “Bud” Tingwell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FFShQpC11s
 
Tom Burlinson, reciting The Man from Snowy River by Banjo Paterson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YCa7YuYty0
 
Jack Thompson reciting Clancy of the Overflow  by A.B. Paterson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s27QP0QGv0
 
Legal Diary, 1892, contained in the Papers of Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson, 1807-1950, held at the National Library
https://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn8047102
 

Winchester (“Venta”)
 
By: Jane Austen (1775-1817)
 
When Winchester races first took their beginning
It is said the good people forgot their old Saint
Not applying at all for the leave of Saint. Swithin
And that William of Wykeham's approval was faint.

The races however were fix'd and determined
The company met & the weather was charming
The Lords & the Ladies were sattin'd & ermin'd
And nobody saw any future alarming.

But when the old Saint was inform'd of these doings
He made but one spring from his shrine to the roof
Of the Palace which now lies so sadly in ruins
And thus he address'd them all standing aloof.

Oh subject rebellious, Oh Venta depraved!
When once we are buried you think we are dead
But behold me Immortal. — By vice you're enslaved
You have sinn'd and must suffer. — Then further he said

These races & revels & dissolute measures
With which you're debasing a neighbourly Plain
Let them stand — you shall meet with a curse in your pleasures
Set off for your course, I'll pursue with my rain.

Ye cannot but know my command in July.
Henceforward I'll triumph in shewing my powers,
Shift your race as you will it shall never be dry
The curse upon Venta is July in showers.
 
 
Venta is the old Roman name for Winchester. St Swithin was the bishop of Winchester, who died in 862. William of Wykeham (1320 to 1404) was the founder of Winchester College and New College Oxford.
 
Jane Austen, an English novelist, was born on 16 December 1775 and died on 18 July 1817, three days after writing the Winchester poem, on St Swithin’s Day, which was also the day of the Winchester Races. When she wrote the poem she knew that she did not have long to live. She was the daughter of Rev. George Austin, and his wife Cassandra.  Outside her family she was taught briefly at Abbey Boarding school in Reading, and in the home of Mrs Cawley. She wrote about 3,000 letters during her life, few of which survive.  Between 1795 and 1799 she began writing Sense and Sensibility, (published 1811), Pride and Prejudice, (1813) and Northanger Abbey, (published posthumously in 1818). Her novels included Mansfield Park, (1814), Emma, (1815) and Persuasion, (1818).  Jane Austen’s novels were perceptive, humorous, and insightful works of social realism and commentary. Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1826 that he 'Also read again and for the third time at least Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice”. His positive review of Emma had been published in 1816.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/457636  Jane Austen’s books have remained in publication, translated into 35 languages, and inspired many adaptions, popular films and series. Jane Austin died in 1817, aged 41, after a year of ill health. She is buried at Winchester Cathedral. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen
 
Emma Corrin, from The Crown, reads a letter from 13 year old Jane Austen, to the Editors of the magazine, The Loiterer.
The Crown's Emma Corrin reads a 13-year-old Jane Austen's letter - YouTube
 
Pride and Prejudice, radio play, NBC University Theatre, Broadcast 20 February 1949, starring Angela Lansbury as Elizabeth Bennet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KigkdzujC74
 
Emma Thompson’s acceptance speech for Best Screenplay, for Sense and Sensibility, at the Golden Globes 1996, reading a letter, as if written by Jane Austen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-zuF_AWvN4

Untitled (a poem from prison)
 
By: Manwel Dimech (1860 – 1921)

 
Ease me of this burden, Lord;

Bid this body leave me free.

Why should I be pained and bored?

Why should I be far from thee?

Flesh and bones I left behind me,

Then why say you that I’m dead?

When I left that heavy burden

From the land of death I fled.

 
Manwel Dimech (born 25 December 1860, Valletta, Malta, died 17 April, 1921, Alexandria, Egypt) was a Maltese writer, political activist, philosopher.  He had no formal education and lived on the streets from an early age. He was first arrested at age 13, for theft, within days of his father’s death. Dimech served nine further prison sentences, including 12 years, commencing in 1878 from the age of 17 for involuntary murder, and a further 7 years commencing in 1890 for forgery of currency. By the age of 36 he had spent 20 years of his life in gaol. He learned to read and write in gaol. His periods of incarceration included 7 years when the Commission of Prisons was the Marquis Giorgio Barbaro, (serving from 1890 to 1897), known as a psychopath, who tortured prisoners and was responsible for the murder of prisoners, two of whom were hung, on the basis of the perjured evidence of Barbaro. This experience deeply influenced Dimech. Dimech was an avid reader, self-taught in gaol, and was also self-taught in English, French, Italian and Maltese, languages which he later taught for a living. He was a philosopher, and was well travelled.  He was deported from Malta in 1914, and accused of being a spy. His last years were spent incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps in Cairo and Alexandria. He was buried in an unmarked grave. Much of his work was lost, including his volumes of poetry. However, in the 1960s and 1970s there was renewed interest in his life and he received national recognition by the President of Malta in November 2012.

If you love for beauty

(Liebst du um Schönheit)

By: Friedrich Ruckert (1788 – 1866)

If you love for beauty,
Oh, do not love me!
Love the sun,
She has golden hair!

If you love for youth,
Oh, do not love me!
Love the spring;
It is young every year!

If you love for treasure,
Oh, do not love me!
Love the mermaid;
She has many clear pearls!

If you love for love,
Oh yes, do love me!
Love me ever,
I'll love you evermore!

***

Liebst du um Schönheit,
O nicht mich liebe!
Liebe die Sonne,
Sie trägt ein gold'nes Haar!

Liebst du um Jugend,
O nicht mich liebe!
Liebe den Frühling,
Der jung ist jedes Jahr!

Liebst du um Schätze,
O nicht mich liebe.
Liebe die Meerfrau,
Sie hat viel Perlen klar.

Liebst du um Liebe,
O ja, mich liebe!
Liebe mich immer,
Dich lieb' ich immerdar.
 
 
(translation by David Kenneth Smith)
 
Dame Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano, born 21 August 1933, sings Mahler: Ruckert-Lieder,  “Liebst du um Schonheit”, with the New Philharmonia, 1969, conductor John Barbirolli, orchestral arrangement by Max Puttman https://youtu.be/UnAcHqOIFLM at 10:14.   Janet Baker - Wikipedia
 
Jessye Norman, 15 September 1945 – 30 September 2019, American opera singer, sings Gustav Mahler, “Liebst du um Schonheit”, Ruckert Lieder, 1969 https://youtu.be/lERHv70QJ1A   Jessye Norman - Wikipedia
 
Paul Rowe Barritone  sings Mahler: Ruckert-Lieder- “Liebst du um Schonheit”,  Kenneth Woods conductor, UW-Madison Symphony Mahler- Ruckert Lieder. Um Mittrernacht. Paul Rowe, baritone, Kenneth Woods, conductor - YouTube
 
Joann Michael Friedrich Ruckert, born 16 May 1788, at  Schweinfurt, died 31 January 1866, at Neuses, now part of Coburg, Germany. He was the eldest son of a lawyer. He was a gifted, largely self-taught linguist and translator and poet, and Professor. He mastered 30 languages. His poetic work inspired composers. There are 121 musical settings of his works, including from Mahler, Schubert, Clara and Robert Schumann, Bartok, Brahms and Strauss.  Mahler composed the lieder “Liebst du um Schonheit” for his bride Alma Schindler, his sole love song.  In 1834, on the death of his two children he wrote Kindertotenlieder “Songs on the Deaths of Children”, which, in 1902,  was set to music by Gustav Mahler.

We never know how high we are (1176)
 
By: Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
 
We never know how high we are
  Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
  Our statures touch the skies—
The Heroism we recite
  Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the Cubits warp
  For fear to be a King—
 
Emily Dickson (10 December 1830 - 15 May 1886), one of America’s greatest poets, grew up in Massachusetts, in a Calvinist household, the daughter of a US Senator. She was reclusive, and eventually would only speak to guests through a closed door. She isolated herself, opening her mind to her inner experiences, without the disturbances and interference of usual social interactions. She once described her life as “still- Volcano- Life”. Only 10 of her poems were published during her lifetime.  “We never know how high we are”  was said to have been written in about 1871 on the back of a milk bill. Her last words, written to her niece,  before her death were: “I must go in, the fog is rising”.  After her death, her sister Vinnie, instructed to burn her letters, came across a box of 1,700 poems which she later gave to a family friend. The poems were published with assistance from Emily Dickinson’s lifelong friend, Terrence Higginson.
 
We never know how high we are, sung by Studentvenvrouwenkoor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHxdpDP8qMs commencing at 2:09

Fantasy
 
By: Gérard De Nerval
Translated by Toru Dutt, 1876
 
There is an air for which I'd freely change
All Weber's, Mozart's, and Rossini's spells:
An old, old air, that of some sorrow tells -
Sad, fascinating, endless, weird, and strange,
 
Each time I hear that air my soul is borne
Back through the vista of two hundred years:
Reigns 'Louis Treize' - and in my sight appears
A hill-side green, where fading sunbeams mourn.
 
Then suddenly a noble castle towers -
Brick, with stone fretwork, and red glass that glows,
Girt by a park, through which a river flows,
Bent over by innumerable ferns and flowers.
 
And then a lady at a window high,
Fair, with dark eyes, in which a tear I trace -
Oh, is it in my dreams I've seen that face?
Or have I ever lived in times gone by?
 
Gérard de Nerval was the pen name of the French writer, poet, and translator Gérard Labrunie, a major figure of French romanticism, best known for his novellas and poems, especially the collection Les Filles du feu (The Daughters of Fire), which included the novella Sylvie and the poem "El Desdichado". Through his translations, Nerval played a major role in introducing French readers to the works of German Romantic authors, including Klopstock, Schiller, Bürger and Goethe. His later work merged poetry and journalism in a fictional context and influenced Marcel Proust. His last novella, Aurélia, influenced André Breton and Surrealism.

Lay of the Harper
 
from the tomb of King Intef (c 2000 B.C.E.)
 
Fortunate is this prince,
For happy was his fate, and happy his ending.
One generation passes away and the next remains,
Ever since the time of those of old.
The gods who existed before me rest now in their tombs,
And the blessed nobles also are buried in their tombs.
But as for these builders of tombs,
Their places are no more.
What has become of them?
I have heard the words of Imhotep and Hardedef
Whose maxims are repeated intact as proverbs.
But what of their places?
Their walls are in ruins,
And their places are no more,
As if they had never existed.
There is no one who returns from beyond
That he may tell of their state,
That he may tell of their lot,
That he may set our hearts at ease
Until we make our journey
To the place where they have gone.
So rejoice your heart!
Absence of care is good for you;
Follow your heart as long as you live.
Put myrrh on your head,
Dress yourself in fine linen,
Anoint yourself with exquisite oils
Which are only for the gods.
Let your pleasures increase,
And let not your heart grow weary.
Follow your heart and your happiness,
Conduct your affairs on earth as your heart dictates,
For that day of mourning will surely come for you.
The Weary-Hearted does not hear their lamentations,
And their weeping does not rescue a man's heart from the grave.
Enjoy pleasant times,
And do not weary thereof.
Behold, it is not given to any man to take his belongings with him,
Behold, there is no one departed who will return again.
 
 
Harper’s Songs, are Egyptian Tomb Songs, inscribed on the walls of the Egyptian tombs, usually next to an image or effigy of a blind may playing a harp. They were recorded in a plain form as early as the Old Kingdom, (c. 2613-2181 BCE), but developed during the Middle Kingdom (c.2040-1782 BCE). The Harper was to sing the lyrics at funeral feasts in the tomb to honour the dead. The Lay of the Harper, in the tomb of King Intef, encouraged people to enjoy life, and was sceptical of an afterlife. The traditional view of death was that it was merely a transition of the soul on its journey to the next stage of an eternal life.  These later Harper’s Songs, particularly from the period of the Middle Kingdom, spoke of death as being a new beginning. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper%27s_Songs
 
Harper's song sung in Spanish by Macarena Fajardo Vicente-Ortega, https://soundcloud.com/macarena-fajardo-vicente-ortega/papiro-harris-500

What Will the New Year Bring?

By: Cui Tu  (born ca.854)

Farther and farther from the three Ba Roads,
I have come three thousand miles, anxious and watchful,
Through pale snow-patches in the jagged night-mountains -
A stranger with a lonely lantern shaken in the wind.

. . . Separation from my kin
Binds me closer to my servants -
Yet how I dread, so far adrift,
New Year's Day, tomorrow morning!

Cui Tu, was born ca.854 towards the end of the Tang Dynasty. There is very little information on his life. It is suggested that Cui Tu was born south of the Yangtze River, in Jiangna, and that he passed the civil service exam in 888. “Thoughts on New Years Eve” or “What Will the New Year Bring?” was one of two poems, written by Cui Tu, included in the anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems, first compiled around 1763. The State of Ba was east of the Sichuan area in this period. The road to Ba was considered a long and difficult road of travel into exile.

The Oxen
 
By: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
 
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
 
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
 
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
 
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
 
 
Thomas Hardy OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. His well-known novels include Far from the Madding Crowd, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles. His poetry has been set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten and other notable composers. Hardy’s wavering and changing beliefs in God, faith, an after-life, supernatural forces, and the powers of spiritualists have been the subject of much debate. When asked, by Dr Grosart, how he could reconcile the horrors experienced by humans and animals with the absolute goodness of an all-powerful God, Hardy responded:  “Mr. Hardy regrets that he is unable to offer any hypothesis which would reconcile the existence of such evils as Dr.Grosart describes with the idea of omnipotent goodness. Perhaps Dr.Grosart might be helped to a provisional view of the universe by the recently published Life of Darwin and the works of Herbert Spencer and other agnostics.”
 
The poem, The Oxen, was published Christmas Eve, 1915, in The Times, during the First World War. The poem refers, in part, to an early belief, that on Christmas eve, each year, stock would kneel in reverence and homage to Jesus.  A “barton” is a reference to a farm building, and a “coomb” is a word used to describe a small valley.
 
Winter Words, Op 52, (1953) composed by Benjamin Britten, sets eight poems by Thomas Hardy, to the composition for tenor voice and piano. “Winter Words”, played by Benjamin Britten and sung by Peter Pears  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PSrFPLGwlU

The Image

By: Anna de Noailles (1876-1933),  translated by Jethro Bithell

Poor fawn in a dying trance,
In thy glazing eye-balls reflect me,
And make my memory dance
With the wraiths that now expect thee.   Say to the dead that muse
On the days when they were sprightly,
I sit and dream of them nightly
In the shadow of the yews.   Praise my forehead wimpled,
And narrow mouth as well;
Tell them my fingers are dimpled,
And of grass and privet smell;   That my movements are unencumbered
As the shadows never at ease,
Which the living leaves unnumbered
Poise in the apple-trees.   Tell them my eyelids grow heavy
At times with a pain that hurts,
That I dance at eve with a bevy
Of maidens with wind-lifted skirts.   Tell them I sleep with my head on
My naked arms that I fold,
That my veins are a violet thread on
A cushion of flesh and gold.   Tell them how blue my hair is,
Like plums that will tumble soon,
That my feet are mirrors for fairies,
That my eyes have the colours of the moon,   And say that in nights of yearning,
By fountains as I pace,
For their tender love I am burning,
And their futile ghosts embrace.

Anna de Noailles, born Princess Anna Elisabeth Bibesco-Bassaraba De Brancovan (15 November 1876 – 30 April 1933) was a French writer, poet, socialist and feminist. She was of Romanian and Greek descent. With her brother Constantin and sister Helene she was brought up in privilege and educated at home. Her father died when she was 10 years old. She was a contemporary and friend of Marcel Proust, Colette, Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob and the literary elite of the period. Due to lifelong ill health she was confined mainly to her bedroom from about 1911, receiving her guests and writing in her small room. In 1921 she received the Grand Prix de Littérature of the Academie Francaise. De Noaille was  the first woman to be received into the Royal Belgian Academy of French Language and Literature in 1922. In 1931, she was the first woman to become a Commander of the Legion of Honor.  https://www.annadenoailles.org/

The Image, read by Richard Mitchley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NUTbyhOoOw

The Instinct of Hope

By: John Clare (1793 - 1864)

Is there another world for this frail dust
To warm with life and be itself again?
Something about me daily speaks there must,
And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?
’Tis nature’s prophesy that such will be,
And everything seems struggling to explain
The close sealed volume of its mystery.
Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace
As seeming anxious of eternity,
To meet that calm and find a resting place.
E’en the small violet feels a future power
And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,
And surely man is no inferior flower
To die unworthy of a second spring?
 
John Clare, (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864, Northamptonshire, England),  the son of an illiterate farm labourer, grew up in poverty, and malnutrition, attending school for a few months each year until the age of 12. He worked as a farm labourer as a child, and then as a potboy at a public house, gardener, plougher,  member of the militia, and lime burner. He was inspired by reading James Thomson’s The Seasons to write poems and sonnets. His favourite books were Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, and Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler. His first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery was published in 1820. Despite his early success, supported by benefactors, he fell back into depression, poverty, and alcoholism, and was voluntarily admitted to High Beach Asylum, where he continued to write and publish poetry, until his death, following a stroke, on 20 May 1886.  He was described as a “poetical genius”.  His gravestone bears these inscriptions: “The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet” and “a Poet is Born not Made”. His work became widely read from the mid 20th century.
John Clare - Wikipedia
 
“First Love’s Recollections”, by John Clare, read by Toby Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9DjKQ0vI-g

“Shepherds almost wonder” by John Clare, read by Toby Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5EIyY9TXqE

London
 
By: William Blake (1757-1827)
 
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. 
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
 
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear 
 
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls, 
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls 
 
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear 
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
 
William Blake, (28 November 1757-12 August 1827) was an English print maker, painter and poet of the Pre-Romantic and Romantic Age. He claimed to see visions from the age of four. From the age of 15 he was apprenticed as an engraver for seven years. Blake became a student of the Royal Academy in 1779.  He was considered to be mentally unstable by some of his contemporaries,  however his idiosyncrasies can be seen as a reflection of his rebellion, radical views, creativity, and his complex mythological symbolism, particularly in his later works of art and poetry. Blake illustrations and engravings included John Milton’s Paradise Lost in 1808, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, from 1824 -1827, and Dante’s Divine Comedy, from 1825 to his death.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake
 
Idris Elba reading “London” by William Blake  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcmWSKqcJro
 
Sir Ralph Richardson, reading “London” by William Blake 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztypINpLsMY

A Gallop of Fire  
By: Marie E J Pitt  1869 (Bullumwaal, Victoria) - 1948 (Kew, Victoria)

When the north wind moans thro' the blind creek courses
And revels with harsh, hot sand,
I loose the horses, the wild red horses,
I loose the horses, the mad, red horses,
And terror is on the land.

With prophetic murmer the hills are humming,
The forest-kings bend and blow;
With hoofs of brass on the baked earth strumming,
O brave red horses, they hear us coming,
And the legions of death lean low.

O'er the wooded height, and the sandy hollow
Where the boles to the axe have rung,
Tho' they fly the foreman as flies the swallow,
The fierce red horses, my horses, follow
With flanks to the faint earth flung.

Or with frenzied hieroglyphs, fear embossing
Night's sable horizon bars,
Thro' tangled mazes of death-darts crossing,
I swing my leaders and watch them tossing
Their red manes against the stars.

But when South winds sob in the drowned creek courses
And whisper to hard wet sand,
I hold the horses, the spent red horses,
I hold the horses, the tired red horses,
And silence is on the land.

Yea, the South wind sobs among the drowned creek courses
For sorrows no man shall bind---
Ah, God! For the horses, the black plumed horses,
Dear God! For the horses, Death's own pale horses,
That raced in the tracks behind.
 
Marie Elizabeth Josephine  Pitt (1869 – 1948), was an Australian poet, socialist, activist and journalist. She was born into a poor family. He father was a goldminer, and her early years were spent living in a rough slab hut with a bark roof at Doherty’s Corner in East Gippsland. Her first verse was published when she was 14, in a local newspaper. She was first published in the Bulletin in 1900. She was the winner in 1902 of the Good Words competition for a song for the Empire. She supported her family with her writing after the death, in 1905 of her husband William from miners’ phthisis. Her publications included “Bairnsdale” (1922), “The poems of Marie E J Pitt” (1925) and “Selected poems ((1944). She became famous in 1944 when her song lyrics “Ave, Australia” won the ABC’s national song lyric competition. Her lyrics were set to music composed by Sir Robert Garran and Sir Ernest MacMillan.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Pitt

The Floods 
 
By: (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling  (1865 - 1936)
I
The rain it rains without a stay
In the hills above us, in the hills;
And presently the floods break way
Whose strength is in the hills.
The trees they suck from every cloud,
The valley brooks they roar aloud--
Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!

The first wood down is sere and small,
From the hills--the brishings off the hills;
And then come by the bats and all
We cut last year in the hills;
And then the roots we tried to cleave
But found too tough and had to leave--
Polting through the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!

The eye shall look, the ear shall hark
To the hills, the doings in the hills,
And rivers mating in the dark
With tokens from the hills.
Now what is weak will! surely go,
And what is strong must prove it so--
Stand Fast in the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!

The floods they shall not be afraid--
Nor the hills above 'em, nor the hills--
Of any fence which man has made
Betwixt him and the hills.
The waters shall not reckon twice
For any work of man's device,
But bid it down to the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!

The floods shall sweep corruption clean--
By the hills, the blessing of the hills--
That more the meadows may be green
New-mended from the hills.
The crops and cattle shall increase,
Nor little children shall not cease.
Go--plough the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
 
(Joseph) Rudyard Kipling, was born in Mumbai India, on 30 December 1865, and died in London, UK, on 18 January 1936. He was  an English poet, journalist, author and nobel laureate. His notable works include the novel The Jungle Book and the poem If.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling
 
His famous observations about life include “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind”, “We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding,” "A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition," and “I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble.”

For the Fallen
 
By: Laurence Binyon (1869 – 1943)
I
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
 
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal 
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
 
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
 
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
 
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; 
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
 
But where our desires are and our hopes profound, 
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
 
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, 
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, 
To the end, to the end, they remain.
 
 
For Remembrance Day, Friday 11 November 2022 commemorating the end of the First World War “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11 month” of 1918, in accordance with the Armistice signed that morning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day
 
“For the Fallen” is recited at Remembrance Day services throughout the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
 
Laurence Binyon, (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was a poet, playwright and art historian. He was a volunteer in the First World War, working as a hospital orderly in France and England, taking care of the wounded. He worked at the British Museum from 1893 until 1933. He was the Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, in 1933. He translated Dante’s Divine Comedy.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laurence-Binyon
 
For the Fallen, read by Sir John Gielgud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I7mhWg7PTI
 
For the Fallen: The Choir of Westminster Abbey sings on Remembrance Day, “For the Fallen”, to a setting by Douglas Guest. The service commemorated the passing of the last British veterans of World War One
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOpnRAOxpLE
 
Edward Elgar, Solemn Prelude “For the Fallen” (Op.80, no. 3 ) performed by Adam Wilson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljzZdaaJBv8

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
 
By: Edward Lear (1812-1888)
 
I
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
   In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
   Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
   And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
    What a beautiful Pussy you are,
         You are,
         You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!"
 
II
Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!
   How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
   But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
   To the land where the Bong-Tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
   With a ring at the end of his nose,
             His nose,
             His nose,
   With a ring at the end of his nose.
 
III
"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
   Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away, and were married next day
   By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
   Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
   They danced by the light of the moon,
             The moon,
             The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
 
 
 
Edward Lear (born  12 May 1812, London, died  29 January 1988, Italy) was an English poet, author, artist and musician. From the age of 4, he was raised and cared for by his elder sister Ann, 21 years his senior.
He suffered from grand mal epilepsy, which in his childhood was not well understood, and caused him feelings of shame and increasing disability throughout his life.
His father, a stockbroker, was sent to debtor’s prison when Lear was 13, and Edward then earned a living as an illustrator.
He worked for the London Zoological Society as an illustrator of birds from 1832. He illustrated some of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poems. Lear created the metre and form of the modern limerick.
Although he suffered  from “the Morbids”, as he called the depression that came on from his early childhood, his writing is irreverent, witty, and devoted to poking fun at the world around him. 
The Owl and the Pussycat, published in 1871, in Lear’s “Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets” is his most famous poem, and a wonderful example of Victorian nonsense verse. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Owl_and_the_Pussy-Cat 

The poem has inspired music, film, books and plays.
 
Dame Judy Dench reads The Owl and the Pussycat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgVmFa7WP4M  and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MtIJsxHMzw
 
Mark Padmore and Roderick Williams, accompanied by Julius Drake, perform The Owl and the  Pussycat, Leeds Lieder Festival   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRohDL7ZmuM
 
Mark Heazlet and Toby Andrews at Lulu’s Café, Mullumbimby perform The Owl and the Pussycat,  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQZIVWhi1U
 
John Rutter and The Cambridge Singers, perform The Owl and the Pussy-cat, from the album â€œA Double Celebration”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLcqkbJs6co

Tomorrow, at Dawn
(Demain, dès l'aube)
 
By: Victor Hugo  (1802 - 1885)
 

This Not All is Over
By: Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
 
Think not, when the wailing winds of autumn
Drive the shivering leaflets from the tree,—
Think not all is over: spring returneth,
Buds and leaves and blossoms thou shalt see.
 
Think not, when the earth lies cold and sealed,
And the weary birds above her mourn,—
Think not all is over: God still liveth,
Songs and sunshine shall again return.
 
Think not, when thy heart is waste and dreary,
When thy cherished hopes lie chill and sere,—
Think not all is over: God still loveth,
He will wipe away thy every tear.
 
Weeping for a night alone endureth,
God at last shall bring a morning hour;
In the frozen buds of every winter
Sleep the blossoms of a future flower.
 
Harriett Beecher Stowe, a Congregationalist minister, author, poet and abolitionist, was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one of the most translated books and one of the 19th century’s bestselling novels. She was born in Connecticut. President Lincoln said about Stowe, that she was “the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe
 
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s words include: “When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you until it seems that you cannot hold on for a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time when the tide will turn.”

Now is the Winter of our Discontent
Richard III, Scene 3, Spoken by Gloucester
 
By William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
 
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.
 
 
 William Shakespeare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare
 
“The Winter of our Discontent”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter_of_Our_Discontent
 
Now is the Winter of our Discontent, Laurence Olivier, 1955 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmWtynh2Xwc
 
Now is the Winter of our Discontent, Ian McKellen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjJEXkbeL-o
 
Richard III, Benedict Cumberbatch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Ji5DOIwDw

Time Is
 
By: Henry Van Dyke (1852 - 1933)
 
Time Is
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too Short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love,
Time is not.
 
Henry van Dyke, American diplomat, clergyman, author and teacher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_van_Dyke_Jr

There is a Lady Sweet and Kind
 
By: Thomas Ford (1580 - 1648)
 
There is a lady sweet and kind,
Was never face so pleas'd my mind;
I did but see her passing by,
And yet I love her till I die.

Her gesture, motion, and her smiles,
Her wit, her voice, my heart beguiles,
Beguiles my heart, I know not why,
And yet I love her till I die.

Her free behaviour, winning looks,
Will make a lawyer burn his books;
I touch'd her not, alas! not I,
And yet I love her till I die.

Had I her fast betwixt mine arms,
Judge you that think such sports were harms,
Were't any harm? no, no, fie, fie,
For I will love her till I die.

Should I remain confined there
So long as Phœbus in his sphere,
I to request, she to deny,
Yet would I love her till I die.

Cupid is winged and doth range,
Her country so my love doth change:
But change she earth, or change she sky,
Yet will I love her till I die.
 
Prime Minister Robert Menzies recited part of this poem in his welcome remarks to Queen Elizabeth II in Canberra in 1963.
 
Thomas Ford, composer and poet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ford_(composer)
 
Paul Robeson sings “There is a lady sweet and kind”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp301zFqiQc
 
The state funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II, Monday 19 September 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_gy9DFtw5U

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud ("Daffodils")
 
By: William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
 
 
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
 
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
 
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
 
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
 
William Wordsworth, was a poet of the English Romantic period, and Poet Laureate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth
 
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud
 
“Daffodils” read by Ralph Fiennes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewsS1BOuwss
 
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” read by Dame Helen Mirren
;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aldxol58J2I

Immortality
 
By: Clare Harner 1934 (1909-1977)
 
Do not stand
    By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
    I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
    Do not stand
            By my grave, and cry—
    I am not there,
            I did not die.
 
Clare Harner, of Kansas, held a degree in journalism. The poem was attributed to her when published in 1934. The origins of the words in the poem have been in dispute.
 
Libera in Leiden- Do not Stand at my Grave and Weep performed January 2011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHZ1cuYSRh4
 
Mary Elizabeth Frye (1905-2004) maintained that she wrote the poem Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep in 1932.  In an interview she said “I thought it belonged to the world- it didn’t belong to me.  I still feel that way. It was written out of love, for comfort- if I took money for it, it would lose it’s value.”
http://www.toallmylovedones.com/article.pdf
 
John Wayne, contributed to the widespread knowledge  of the poem after he read “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” at the funeral of Hollywood actor Ward Bond in 1960, and at Hollywood director Howard Winchester Hawks’ funeral in 1977. The poem was recited at John Wayne’s funeral in 1979.
 
Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep 
 
            By Mary Elizabeth Frye (1905-2004)
 
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears
 
Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene ii  
Monologue spoken by Marc Antony
 
By: William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
 
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
 
William Shakespeare, English playwright and poet, considered to be the world’s greatest dramatist and writer in the English Language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare
 
"Friends, Romans, Countrymen" Julius Caesar at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8slDtT-Hhg
 
Marlon Brandon, as Mark Antony  (1953)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=101sKhH-lMQ
 
Damian Lewis, as Mark Antony (2016)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q89MLuLSJgk
 
Friends, Romans Countrymen, lend me your ears https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends,_Romans,_countrymen,_lend_me_your_ears

Sonnets from the Portuguese 14: If thou must love me, let it be for nought
 
 
By: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806 - 1861)
 
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
I love her for her smile ... her look ... her way
Of speaking gently, ... for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.
 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Barrett_Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese was published in 1850- a collection of 44 love sonnets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnets_from_the_Portuguese?text=Sonnets_from_the_Portuguese,_written,lifetime_and_it_remains_so

Auld Lang Syne
 
 
By: Robert Burns  (1759-1796)
 
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne
    For auld lang syne, my jo,
     For auld lang syne.
     We'll tak’ a cup o' kindness yet,
     For auld lang syne.
And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
     For auld lang syne, my jo,
     For auld lang syne.
     We'll tak’ a cup o' kindness yet,
     For auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
Sin' auld lang syne.
    For auld lang syne, my jo,
     For auld lang syne.
     We'll tak’ a cup o' kindness yet,
     For auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne.
     For auld lang syne, my jo,
     For auld lang syne.
     We'll tak’ a cup o' kindness yet,
     For auld lang syne.
And there's a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.
     For auld lang syne, my jo,
     For auld lang syne.
     We'll tak’ a cup o' kindness yet,
     For auld lang syne.
 
Auld Lang Syne was written by Robbie Burns in 1788, based on an older Scottish folk song. The title may be translated as “for old times’ sake”. It is traditionally sung at farewells, and at the end of New Years gatherings. 
Robbie Burns, is the national poet of Scotland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns (Wikipedia)  
https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns (Scots Wiki)
 
Auld Lang Syne was played by the bagpiper at the funeral of Singapore’s prime minister Lee Kuan Yew on 25 March 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tES24D44OBc
 
It was sung by members of the European Parliament when the Brexit agreement was passed on 29 January 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZmSBFMnIuc
Auld Lang Syne, played by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to1xT93IlUI

To the tune "Drunk in Blossom's Shadows"
 
By: Li Qingzhao (1084 - ca. 1155)
 
Light mist, thick vapors, sad through an endless morning.
Camphor incense turns to ash inside the golden beast.
Again it’s Double Ninth Festival,
to the precious pillow, within the gauze netting,
a chill enters at midnight.
 
Holding wine after sunset by the eastern fence,
a subtle fragrance fills the sleeves.
Don’t say she’s not heartbroken—
as the west wind lifts the blinds,
she’s more withered than the yellow flowers.
 
Li Qingzhao, published under the names  Yi’an Jushi, and Li Yi’an. She is considered one of China’s greatest poets and essayists. She was born into a family of great literary knowledge. She was writing poetry at least from the age of 17. She lived during the Northern Song dynasty, which fell during her life time. Although she produced six volumes of poetry, and volumes of prose, and essays her work survives only in fragments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Qingzhao
 
Singing of Drunken Flower Shades, from the Song Cycle “Love and Lose”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uT4HxQRjdk
Singing of Li Quingzhao’s Drunk in Blossom shade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JUK3gW0GPc
 
Li Quingzhao wrote as an Afterward in one of her husband, Zhao Mingcheng’s collected works:
 
“It happens that I have a good memory, and in the evenings after dinner we would sit in our hall named Returning Home and brew tea.
We’d point to a pile of books and, choosing a particular event, try to say in which book, which chapter, which page, and which line it was recorded.
The winner of our little contest got to drink first. When I guessed right, I’d hold the cup high and burst out laughing until the tea splattered the front of my gown.
I’d have to get up without even taking a sip. Oh, how I wished we could grow old living like that!”
 
The above translations are from The Works of Li Quingzhao, translated by Ronald Egan, and published by DeGruyter
https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/4f210ef9-3d96-49ba-926c-cab1bc502e33/1006618.pdf
 
Ronald Egan’s Li Qingzhao Memorial Lecture, 2014, is on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB8NZNFppvA

Ronald Egan is the Confucius Institute Professor of Sinology, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University.

LAMENT FOR A BROTHER
 
By: Al-Khansa (circa 575-646)
 
What have we done to you death 
that you treat us so, with always another catch,
one day a warrior 
the next a head of state
charmed by the loyal 
you choose the best
iniquitous, unequalling death
I would not complain 
if you were just
but you take the worthy 
leaving fools for us.
 
 
Al-Khansa aka Tumadir bint Amru al-Harith bint al-Sharid was born in Najid of Arabia (now Saudi Arabia), was one of the most celebrated poets of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic age, and one of the greatest Arab women poets of all ages. Her poems included lamentations or elegies called “marthiya” to the deaths of her brother and half-brother, killed in tribal battles, in 612 and 615, and to the death of her father and four of her sons.  She met the Prophet Muhammed, in her mid- 50’s, in about 630, when with her tribe she accepted Islam. She was descried as the “finest poet among humans and jinn”. Across the Arab world many learning institutions and hospitals bear her name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khansa
 
Medieval Arabic female poets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Arabic_female_poets

The Tyger
 
By: William Blake (1757-1827)
 
 
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
 
The Tyger by Wililam Blake read by Dame Helen Mirren
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHRJwIYexKY
 
The Tyger, read by Sir Ralph Richardson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5uBmL0HhaQ
 
William Blake, English poet, print maker and painter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

The Tyger, first published in 1794 from Songs of Experience,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyger

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
 
By: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1797-1798)

Part I
 
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
 
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.'
 
He holds him with his skinny hand,
'There was a ship,' quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
 
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.
 
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
 
'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.
 
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
 
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon—'
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
 
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
 
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
 
And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
 
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
 
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
 
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
 
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
 
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
 
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
 
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!
 
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.'
 
'God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
 
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, published 1798 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner
 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge
 
Sir Richard Burton reads “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGH4p4z4s5A
 
Sir Ian McKellen reads “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1raSUYAr0s0

Casabianca
 
By: Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835)
 
The boy stood on the burning deck
  Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
  Shone round him o'er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
  As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
  A proud, though child-like form.
The flames rolled on–he would not go
  Without his Father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
  His voice no longer heard.
He called aloud–'say, Father, say
  If yet my task is done?'
He knew not that the chieftain lay
  Unconscious of his son.
'Speak, father!' once again he cried,
  'If I may yet be gone!'
And but the booming shots replied,
  And fast the flames rolled on.
Upon his brow he felt their breath,
  And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death
  In still yet brave despair.
And shouted but once more aloud,
  'My father! must I stay?'
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
  The wreathing fires made way.
They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
  They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,
  Like banners in the sky.
There came a burst of thunder sound–
   The boy–oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
  With fragments strewed the sea!–
With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
  That well had borne their part–
But the noblest thing which perished there
  Was that young faithful heart.
 
Casabianca, first published 1826
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casabianca_(poem)
 
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicia_Hemans
 
A poem often recited at school and much parodied, including by Spike Milligan  
https://www.semicolonblog.com/?p=7063

Pied Beauty
 
By: Gerard Manly Hopkins (1844-1889)
 
Glory be to God for dappled things—
 For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
 For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
 Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
 And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
 Praise him.
  
Gerard Manley Hopkins, English poet, Jesuit priest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins
 
Pied Beauty written in 1877.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Beauty

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
 
By: William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939)
 
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
 
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
 
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
  
William Butler Yeats, Irish poet and writer, Nobel Laureate and a Senator of the Irish Free State,
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._B._Yeats &
 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-butler-yeats
 
Anthony Hopkins recites Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNeq7Dakv_k
 
WB Yeats reads The Lake Isle of Innisfree
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLlcvQg9i6c

"Hope" is the thing with feathers (314)
 
By: Emily Dickinson (10 December, 1830-15 May, 1886)
 
Hope is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
 
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
 
I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
 
Emily Dickinson  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson
Emily Dickinson Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson_Museum

Hope is the thing with feathers, sung by Nazareth College Treble Choir, Linehan Chapel, Nazareth College https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDlSo4hEzmE