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's Short Poetry Collection 045: a collection of 20 public-domain poems.

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Poetry

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Excerpt: Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica by Anthony Trollope.

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Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner (1719) is considered by many the first English novel. Based on the real-life experiences of the castaway Alexander Selkirk, the book has had a perrenial appeal among readers of all ages-–especially the young adult reading public–-who continue to find inspiration in the inventive resourcefulness of its hero, sole survivor of a shipwreck who is marooned on an uninhabited island. Especially poignant, after more than two decades of unbroken solitude, is the affection that Robinson develops for Friday, another survivor fleeing certain death at the hands of enemy tribesmen from the South American continent. (Summary by Denny Sayers)...

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Adventure

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Like Wuthering Heights, the center of this story is a dramatic love triangle, the setting is a huge English manor. Olivia Marchmont has always done her duty. However, when she falls in love and her beloved is in love with another woman, the malice of her heart is released in full view. In this dramatic tale, the vivid description of the country is also important- as if nature has a part in it. Unlike many novels, nobody gets what they deserve at the end. Or do they? Read and decide for yourself. (Summary by Stav Nisser)...

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Fiction, Romance

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readers have cast their nets wide to create this small collection of letters and poems, from fiction and from life, from heart to heart and from soul to soul. With love for St Valentine. (Summary by Peter Yearsley)...

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Epistolary fiction

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Excerpt: An ancient English cathedral tower? How can the ancient English Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is set up by the Sultan?s orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one....

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Excerpt: Your name, dear George, while casting a reflected radiance on my book, can gain no new glory from this page. And yet it is neither self-interest nor diffidence which has led me to place it there, but only the wish that it should bear witness to the solid friendship between us, which has survived our wanderings and separations, and triumphed over the busy malice of the world....

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Excerpt: The Morte Darthur was finished, as the epilogue tells us, in the ninth year of Edward IV., i.e. between March 4, 1469 and the same date in 1470. It is thus, fitly enough, the last important English book written before the introduction of printing into this country, and since no manuscript of it has come down to us it is also the first English classic for our knowledge of which we are entirely dependent on a printed text. Caxton?s story of how the book was brought to him and he was induced to print it may be read farther on in his own preface. From this we learn also that he was not only the printer of the book, but to some extent its editor also, dividing Malory?s work into twentyone books, splitting up the books into chapters, by no means skilfully, and supplying the ?Rubrish? or chapter-headings. It may be added that Caxton?s preface contains, moreover, a brief criticism which, on the points on which it touches, is still the soundest and most sympathetic that has been written....

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Excerpt: Several of us, all more or less connected with the sea, were dining in a small river-hostelry not more than thirty miles from London, and less than twenty from that shallow and dangerous puddle to which our coasting men give the grandiose name of ?German Ocean.? And through the wide windows we had a view of the Thames; an enfilading view down the Lower Hope Reach. But the dinner was execrable, and all the feast was for the eyes....

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Excerpt: The writer of a book which copies the manners and language of Queen Anne?s time, must not omit the Dedication to the Patron; and I ask leave to inscribe this volume to your Lordship, for the sake of the great kindness and friendship which I owe to you and yours. My volume will reach you when the Author is on his voyage to a country where your name is as well known as here. Wherever I am, I shall gratefully regard you; and shall not be the less welcomed in America because I am....

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The book of John stands out among the Biblical writings about Jesus as an eloquent depiction of his deity, composed in detailed and elegant prose. It's believed to have been written by the apostle John near the end of the first century A.D. The World English Bible is a new public-domain translation, retaining the accuracy and beauty of previous translations as well as of the original languages, while achieving a remarkable level of accessibility to modern readers. Summary by Rachelellen...

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Religion

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Pope’s Essay on Man, a masterpiece of concise summary in itself, can fairly be summed up as an optimistic enquiry into mankind’s place in the vast Chain of Being. Each of the poem’s four Epistles takes a different perspective, presenting Man in relation to the universe, as individual, in society and, finally, tracing his prospects for achieving the goal of happiness. In choosing stately rhyming couplets to explore his theme, Pope sometimes becomes obscure through compressing his language overmuch. By and large, the work is a triumphant exercise in philosophical poetry, communicating its broad and commonplace truths in superbly balanced phrases which remind us that Pope, alas, is one of the most quoted but least read writers in English: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest.” (Summary by Martin Geeson)...

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Literature, Poetry, Religion

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Excerpt: Bianchon, a physician to whom science owes a fine system of theoretical physiology, and who, while still young, made himself a celebrity in the medical school of Paris, that central luminary to which European doctors do homage, practiced surgery for a long time before he took up medicine. His earliest studies were guided by one of the greatest of French surgeons, the illustrious Desplein, who flashed across science like a meteor. By the consensus even of his enemies, he took with him to the tomb an incommunicable method. Like all men of genius, he had no heirs; he carried everything in him, and carried it away with him. The glory of a surgeon is like that of an actor: they live only so long as they are alive, and their talent leaves no trace when they are gone. Actors and surgeons, like great singers too, like the executants who by their performance increase the power of music tenfold, are all the heroes of a moment....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. It was in the early days of April; Bernard Longueville had been spending the winter in Rome. He had travelled northward with the consciousness of several social duties that appealed to him from the further side of the Alps, but he was under the charm of the Italian spring, and he made a pretext for lingering....

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Excerpt: CHAPTER I; PRELIMINARY -- CONSIDERING our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,--it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes. Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will endure forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and watertransport of all kinds has grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the labors of ...

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Table of Contents: BOOK I 3 -- CHAPTER I ?PRELIMINARY, 3 -- CHAPTER II ?EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES, 7 -- CHAPTER III ?REMINISCENCES, 11 -- CHAPTER IV? CHARACTERISTICS, 19 -- CHAPTER V? THE WORLD IN CLOTHES, 24 -- CHAPTER VI? APRONS, 29 -- CHAPTER VII? MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL, 31 -- CHAPTER VIII? THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES, 34 -- CHAPTER IX? ADAMITISM, 39 -- CHAPTER X? PURE REASON, 43 -- CHAPTER XI? PROSPECTIVE, 47 -- BOOK II 55 -- CHAPTER I ?GENESIS, 55 -- CHAPTER II ?IDYLLIC, 61 -- CHAPTER III ?PEDAGOGY, 68 -- CHAPTER IV? GETTING UNDER WAY, 79 -- CHAPTER V? ROMANCE, 88 -- CHAPTER VI? SORROWS OF TEUFELSDRO? CKH, 97 -- CHAPTER VII? THE EVERLASTING NO, 104 -- CHAPTER VIII? CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE, 110 -- CHAPTER IX? THE EVERLASTING YEA, 118 -- CHAPTER X? PAUSE, 126 -- BOOK III 133 -- CHAPTER I ?INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY, 133 -- CHAPTER II ?CHURCH-CLOTHES, 137...

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volunteers bring you 9 recordings of Cana by James Freeman Clarke, from The World's Best Poetry, edited by Bliss Carman. This was the Weekly Poetry project for November 14th, 2010. Trivia: After hearing the song John Brown's Body, Clarke suggested that Mrs. Julia Ward Howe write new lyrics; the result was The Battle Hymn of the Republic. He published but few verses, but at heart was a poet....

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Advice, Philosophy, Religion, Poetry

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François-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743-1803) rose to fame in 1791 during the Haitian struggle for independence. In this revolt, he led thousands of slaves on the island of Hispañola to fight against the colonial European powers of France, Spain and England. The former slaves ultimately established the independent state of Haiti and expelled the Europeans. L’Ouverture eventually became the governor and Commander-In-Chief of Haiti before recognizing and submitting to French rule in 1801. In June of 1802, L’Ouverture was arrested by French forces and taken to France where he was imprisoned at Joux. There he penned his autobiography “. . . to render to the French government an exact account of my conduct.” L’Ouverture died in prison on April 7, 1803 from pneumonia. Although L’Ouverture died a captive of the French, the revolution he led was historically perhaps the most significant world event opposing slavery. It precipitated a re-examination--among the major European powers as well as those in the new world--of the right of all mankind to be free and self-governing. John Relly Beard, an English minister, wrote The Life of Tous...

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Adventure, Biography, History, Memoirs, Politics, War stories

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Introduction: Francois Marie Arouet, who called himself Voltaire, was the son of Francois Arouet of Poitou, who lived in Paris, had given up his office of notary two years before the birth of this his third son, and obtained some years afterwards a treasurer?s office in the Chambre des Comptes. Voltaire was born in the year 1694. He lived until within ten or eleven years of the outbreak of the Great French Revolution, and was a chief leader in the movement of thought that preceded the Revolution. Though he lived to his eighty-fourth year, Voltaire was born with a weak body....

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Contents LETTER I.?ON THE QUAKERS .............................................................................................................................. 6 LETTER II.?ON THE QUAKERS .......................................................................................................................... 10 LETTER III.?ON THE QUAKERS ......................................................................................................................... 12 LETTER IV.?ON THE QUAKERS......................................................................................................................... 16 LETTER V.?ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND .................................................................................................. 20 LETTER VI.?ON THE PRESBYTERIANS............................................................................................................ 23 LETTER VII.?ON THE SOCINIANS, OR ARIANS, OR ANTITRINITARIANS ............................................. 24 LETTER VIII.?ON THE PARLIAMENT ............................................................................................................... ...

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Original poetry, in the mainstream European tradition.

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Mere Aphrodite Night Old Ballad Three Anonymous Motets From the Mountain Open Watch Never A wing, a flower Leavings Mind – Matter From the almond-tree A Little Course in Morality Getting Lost Heavens Watching the City Birch Remember Breathing the Void Reaching Down The Twenty-Eight Stations of the Heart From the First Gatha On the Island Astro-physics Somewhere Owls Recanati Storm Index Of First Lines...

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Marie Curie, born in Warsaw in 1867, was a French physicist and chemist famous for her work on radioactivity. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity and the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes - in physics (1903) and chemistry (1911). The risks of working with strongly radioactive materials were not known at that time, and she eventually died in 1934 from an illness likely caused by radiation poisoning. Radioactive Substances is the thesis of Marie Curie, presented to the Faculté de Sciences de Paris in 1903, and subsequently published in Chemical News vol 88, 1903. Marie Curie gives a detailed description of her research on radioactive substances carried out at the Sorbonne. She details how she obtained the two new elements radium and polonium from pitchblende, explains her numerous experiments and presents measurements of all kinds. (Summary by Availle)...

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Science