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Victoria Mary Sackville-West, The Hon Lady Nicolson, best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and poet. Her long narrative poem, The Land, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She won it again, becoming the only writer to do so, in 1933 with her Collected Poems. She helped create her own gardens in Sissinghurst, Kent, which provide the backdrop to Sissinghurst Castle. She was famous for her exuberant aristocratic life, her strong marriage, and her passionate affair with novelist Virginia Woolf. Poems of West and East is a short collection of her early work, which was published in 1917. (Summary by Wikipedia and Elizabeth Klett)...

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Poetry

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A collection of poems by Wallace Stevens published before 1923. Trained as a lawyer, within eleven years after these poems were written he was a vice-president at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company in Connecticut. He continued to pursue a quiet life of poetry and correspondence and for the remainder of his life nurtured his contemplative habit of observation and writing as he walked from home to work and back again. Few at Hartford knew of his world acclaim as a poet. While his major work is considered to have been written when he was much older, many of these early poems are firm classics in the American poetic canon, including: Anecdote of the Jar, The Emperor of Ice Cream, Peter Quince at the Clavier, Sunday Morning, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and others. Stevens died of cancer in 1955, not long after receiving the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. All poems and recordings are in the public domain. This collection was recorded for .org. (Summary by Alan Davis-Drake)...

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Poetry

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Charlotte Turner Smith (1749 – 1806) was an English poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility. It was in 1784, in debtor's prison with her husband Benjamin, that she wrote and published her first work, Elegiac Sonnets. The work achieved instant success, allowing Charlotte to pay for their release from prison. Smith's sonnets helped initiate a revival of the form and granted an aura of respectability to her later novels. Stuart Curran, the editor of Smith's poems, has written that Smith is the first poet in England whom in retrospect we would call Romantic. She helped shape the patterns of thought and conventions of style for the period. Romantic poet William Wordsworth was the most affected by her works. He said of Smith in the 1830s that she was a lady to whom English verse is under greater obligations than are likely to be either acknowledged or remembered. By the second half of the nineteenth century, however, Smith was largely forgotten....

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Poetry

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Sir John Suckling (1609-42) was one of the Cavalier poets at the court of King Charles I of England. He took up arms in the conflicts of that era but was said to be more fit for the boudoir than the battlefield. He was a prolific lover, a sparkling wit and an excessive gamester and is credited with inventing the card game, Cribbage. Cavalier poetry was witty, decorous and sometimes naughty. The Constant Lover displays these elements as well as Suckling's conversational ease and charm....

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Poetry

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In stunning narrative poetry, the story begins during the time when Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick has been hunted out of Scotland into exile by the English and their allies. Bruce returns over sea from the Island of Rachrin: but is forced to land close to hostile forces at Artonish Castle on the seacoast of Argylshire. Seeking refuge from tempestuous seas, Bruce begs shelter from Ronald, Lord of the Isles: inadvertently on the day of his marriage feast to the beautiful Edith of Lorn. Bruce's very presence is enough to interrupt the nuptials and to break up the festivities: the guests quickly polarise into two armed and equally matched factions: one ready to raise Bruce to the Scottish crown, the other ready to slay him for desecration and murder. The combatants are dispersed with no bloodshed only by the combined offices of Lord Ronald himself, aided by a visiting Abbot: whereupon Bruce quickly removes himself to first the Island of Sky, and then Ayrshire: raising the an army willing to rout the English and re-establish Scottish independence. Bruce begins to win a steady stream of victories as his armies march inevitably towards Ban...

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Poetry

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Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552 – 29 October 1618) was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England. Raleigh's poetry is written in the relatively straightforward, unornamented mode known as the plain style. C. S. Lewis considered Raleigh one of the era's silver poets, a group of writers who resisted the Italian Renaissance influence of dense classical reference and elaborate poetic devices. In poems such as What is Our Life and The Lie, Raleigh expresses a contemptus mundi (contempt of the world) attitude more characteristic of the Middle Ages than of the dawning era of humanistic optimism. But, his lesser-known long poem The Ocean to Cynthia combines this vein with the more elaborate conceits associated with his contemporaries Edmund Spenser and John Donne, expressing a melancholy sense of history. A minor poem of Raleigh's captures the atmosphere of the court at the time of Queen Elizabeth I. His response to Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to His Love was The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd. The Passionate Shepherd to His Love was writ...

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Poetry

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The Lays of Ancient Rome comprise four narrative poems comprised by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay: recalling popular episodes from Roman historical-legends that were strongly moral in tone: exemplifying Roman virtue against Latine perfidy. The four poems are: - Horatius - Horatius and two companions seek to hold back a large invading Etruscan force at the far end of a bridge over the Tiber River. The trio are willing to lay down their lives so as to prevent the Etruscans crossing and sacking the otherwise ill-defended Rome: it is a desperate gamble to buy enough time for the Romans to destroy the bridge in advance of the hostile army. But will their efforts succeed? - The Battle of Lake Regillus - The Romans take arms against the powerful Latine league headed by the expelled Tarquin nobles. The fighting is desperate and bloody: the event is decided only after the arrival upon the battlefield of the twin gods Castor and Pollux. - Virginia - Virginia is the daughter of Virginius - a poor, honest Roman farmer-citizen. In former years Virginius enlisted as a legionary and shed his blood to fight Rome's enemies: now Virginius - like oth...

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Poetry

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Mirza Ghalib, full name Mirza Asadullah Khan Beig, pen name ‘Ghalib’ (1797-1869) was a famous Urdu- and Persian-language poet of India. He is best known for his lyrical and spiritual ghazals. Ghazal is a form of poetry in couplets. In a ghazal, each couplet is self-contained and generally unconnected with the next. Ghalib was born in Agra, in northern India, and was raised by his uncle. Ghalib had no formal education, but was tutored in Persian by Muhammad Mu'azzam, a noted scholar of the time. It got married in 1810 to Umrao Begum, the niece of Nawab Ahmad Baksh Khan who was the ruler of Ferozepur and Loharu at that time. Ghalib was introduced to the elite circle of intellectuals and artists that surrounded the Indian royal family in Delhi because of his father in law. In 1821 he compiled his first collection of Urdu verse. Deewan e Ghalib, Nuskha e Hamida was Published in 1828. soon after the publication of his Urdu poetry collection Ghalib switched to writing entirely in Persian, also known as Farsi. In 1826, on the death of Ghalib's uncle, the British government began providing Ghalib and his family with a small pension for the ...

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Poetry

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“Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?” The wonder-decade of the English drama was suddenly interrupted in 1592, when serious plague broke out in London, forcing the closure of the theatres. Leading playwrights took to penning languorously erotic poetry to make ends meet: so we have Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece - and Marlowe’s blazing masterpiece, Hero and Leander. Marlowe’s poem became more notorious than either of Shakespeare’s, due not only to its homophile provocations but also to the scandal attaching to every aspect of Marlowe’s brief life, violently ended in a mysterious brawl, leaving the poem in an unfinished state. The edition read here includes the wonderful continuation by George Chapman, a versatile playwright: tragedian as well as author of Jonsonian metropolitan comedies: in short, an all-round literary craftsman, whose Homer translation was famously admired by Keats. Chapman excels in extended allegory, but also in pithiest epigram – “Love is a golden bubble, full of dreams, That waking breaks, and fills us with extremes.” All these playwrights come from the generation of grammar-school alumni raise...

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Myths/Legends, Poetry

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Among monuments of narrative poetry, The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind, by William Wordsworth, occupies a unique place. Wordsworth published the first version of the poem in 1798, but continued to work on it for the rest of his life. The final version, which is the subject of this recording, was published posthumously in 1850, by Wordworth’s widow, Mary.The Prelude is the first major narrative poem in European literature which deals solely with the spiritual journey of the author. In this respect the only predecessor to which it can be compared in Dante’s Divine Comedy, which is similarly a journey from personal confusion to certitude, from ignorance to realization. However, Dante starts his journey at the age of 35, and, through a lengthy rite of passage, involving both moral and intellectual purification, arrives at a state of illumination that he is not really able to describe. In The Prelude, on the other hand, illumination appears as the background on which the story is inscribed. Wordsworth is really no wiser at the end of his journey than he was at the start, but appears more accepting of the inexorable and sometimes b...

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Biography, Poetry

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volunteers bring you 16 recordings of A Ruined Reversolet by C. J. Dennis. This was the Weekly Poetry project for October 28, 2012. Clarence James Dennis was an Australian poet and journalist. In his varied career, he worked as a barman, shearer, solicitor's clerk, newspaper proprietor and (as do many Australians) a civil servant, before settling down in a rural retreat at Toolangi, in the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne. His most famous work is The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, a verse novel written in an Australian vernacular and first published in 1915. Despite its artless presentation, Dennis' verse is constructed with great skill, and attracted enthusiastic reviews from such august critics as H.G. Wells. E.V. Lucas and Sir John Betjeman. Dennis' significance as a literary figure has been recognized by the establishment of C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry, which is awarded annually as part of the Premier's Literary Awards for the state of Victoria....

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Humor, Poetry, Nature

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Sonnets from the Portuguese, written ca. 1845–1846 and first published in 1850, is a collection of forty-four love sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poems largely chronicle the period leading up to her 1846 marriage to Robert Browning. The collection was acclaimed and popular even in the poet's lifetime and it remains so today. Elizabeth was initially hesitant to publish the poems, feeling that they were too personal. However, Robert insisted that they were the best sequence of English-language sonnets since Shakespeare's time and urged her to publish them. To offer the couple some privacy, she decided that she might publish them under a title disguising the poems as translations of foreign sonnets. Therefore, the collection was first to be known as Sonnets from the Bosnian, until Robert suggested that she change their imaginary original language to Portuguese, probably after his nickname for her: my little Portuguese. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Romance, Poetry

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Throughout history there have been many creative artists whose fame depends largely on their association with a much greater artist. Such the case of Thomas Shadwell, poet and prolific writer of low brow comedies, who is today most famous as the butt of satire by one of greatest and most influential English poets, John Dryden. Shadwell and Dryden were at first colleagues and collaborators, but later fell out over some sharp divergences of opinion. In particular, Dryden disagreed with Shadwell's high estimation of Ben Jonson, and even more of the latter's claim to be be Jonson's artistic heir. The most celebrated product of this controversy was Dryden's satirical poem, Mac Flecknoe, in which he presents Shadwell as the apostle of dullness. This elegant satire was first circulated unpublished in pamphlet form and then published in 1682. Shadwell responded with The Medal of John Bayes which has as a preface a mocking Epistle to the Tories. Dryden's reply was a further poem The Medal which likewise had a preface: Epistle to the Whigs. Shadwell is also the subject of harsh reference in Dryden's Absolom and Achitophel (1681). In his lifet...

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Poetry, Satire

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volunteers bring you 13 recordings of An Ode by Táhirih (Fátimih Baraghání) (1814/1817 – 1852), Translated by Edward Granville Browne (1862 – 1926). This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for February 7th, 2010. Fátimih Baraghání (1814/1817 – 1852), also known by the titles of Táhirih (Arabic for “The Pure One”) and Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (Arabic for “Consolation of the Eyes”) was an influential Iranian poet and Bábí heroine from the town of Qazvín. Her legacy is important to Bahá’ís, as well as supporters of women’s rights in Iran. In 1844, she became the seventeenth disciple or “Letter of the Living” of the Báb (1819-1850). As the only woman in this initial group of disciples, she is often compared to Mary Magdalene. From June-July 1848, she attended the Conference of Badasht where she appeared without a veil in public (a shocking statement of women’s rights) and declared that a new religious dispensation had been inaugurated. Coincidentally, shortly after this, the Seneca Falls Convention (an important women’s rights convention) was held in New York on the 19th-20th of July, 1848. She was executed in Tehran in 1852. Before her death, sh...

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Religion, Poetry

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_Our Old Nursery Rhymes_ (1911) is a book of 30 of folkloric songs arranged by Alfred Moffatt and beautifully illustrated by H. Willebeck Le Mair. You and your child can listen and sing along as you read the http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SaveBook?bookid=___oldn_00150057&lang=English facsimile edition online from the Children's Digital Library. These nursery rhymes were performed made by 17 talented university student musicians who are sisters in the Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity for Women at California State University-Stanislaus. The project was conceived as an opportunity to offer service to the music-loving community around the world and to children everywhere. [Summary written by Dennis Sayers]....

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Children, Poetry, Music

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John Donne was an English Jacobean preacher, sometime lawyer, later in life a Member of Parliament and Royal Chaplain. Marrying for love against the wishes of his influential father-in-law; Donne's career was cast into shadow: forcing him to support his wife, Anne, as best he might under a specter of unforgiving penury. Despite such hardships - perhaps because of them - Donne's writings demonstrate a mastery of poetry layered with metaphysical meaning and mystery: which continues to delight and challenge modern-day readers. Donne's divine poems - the focus of this collection - present profound theological insights using absorbing allegories and beautiful imagery. At the end of Donne's life - as his health deteriorated under illnesses of increasing severity - his poetry served him as: distraction, consolation, and even public confession. With them, Donne cheerfully but soberly faces the limits of his own mortality: and contemplates the mysteries that lie beyond the grave. (Introduction by Godsend)...

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Poetry, Religion

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volunteers bring you 20 recordings of Siberia by James Clarence Mangan. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for September 2, 2012. James Clarence Mangan wad born in Dublin. He was educated at a Jesuit school where he learned the rudiments of Latin, Spanish, French, and Italian. He attended three different schools until the age of fifteen. Obliged to find a job in order to support his family, he became a lawyer's clerk, and was later an employee of the Ordnance Survey and an assistant in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Poetry, Adventure, Nature, Tragedy

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The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany in May 1712 in two cantos (334 lines), but then revised, expanded and reissued under Pope's name on March 2, 1714, in a much-expanded 5-canto version (794 lines). The final form was available in 1717 with the addition of Clarissa's speech on good humour. The poem satirizes a petty squabble by comparing it to the epic world of the gods. It was based on an incident recounted by Pope's friend, John Caryll. Arabella Fermor and her suitor, Lord Petre, were both from aristocratic recusant Catholic families at a period in England when under such laws as the Test Act, all denominations except Anglicanism suffered legal restrictions and penalties (for example Petre could not take up his place in the House of Lords as a Catholic). Petre, lusting after Arabella, had cut off a lock of her hair without permission, and the consequent argument had created a breach between the two families. Pope, also a Catholic, wrote the poem at the request of friends in an attempt to comically merge the two. He utilized the character...

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Poetry, Satire

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The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke is a verse novel by Australian novelist and poet C. J. Dennis. The book sold over 60,000 copies in nine editions within the first year, and is probably one of the highest selling verse novels ever published in Australia. The novel tells the story of Bill, a larrikin of the Little Lonsdale Street Push, who is introduced to a young woman by the name of Doreen. The book chronicles their courtship and marriage, detailing Bill's transformation from a violence-prone gang member to a contented husband and father. C.J. Dennis went on to publish three sequels to this novel: The Moods of Ginger Mick (1916), Doreen (1917) and Rose of Spadgers (1924...

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Poetry, Adventure, Myths/Legends

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volunteers bring you 15 recordings of Early Rising by John Godfrey Saxe. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for December 31, 2010. The words dutiful and pious never applied to the aspiring satirist. Bored by his legal work, Saxe began publishing poems for The Knickerbocker, of which The Rhyme of the Rail is his most famous early work. He soon caught the attention of the prominent Boston publishing house, Ticknor and Fields. Though he received no royalties for his first volume, it ran to ten reprintings and eventually outsold works by Hawthorne and Tennyson....

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Poetry, Instruction, Nature, Philosophy, Religion, Humor

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Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen ist ein satirisches Versepos des deutschen Dichters Heinrich Heine (1797–1856). Unzufrieden mit den politischen Verhältnissen im Deutschland der Restaurationszeit, die ihm als getauftem Juden keine Möglichkeit für eine juristische Tätigkeit bot, und um der Zensur zu entgehen, emigrierte Heine 1831 nach Frankreich. 1835 verbot ein Beschluss des deutschen Bundestags seine Schriften. Ende 1843 kehrt er noch einmal für wenige Wochen nach Deutschland zurück. Auf der Rückreise entstand der erste Entwurf zu „Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen“. Heine verknüpft in dem Werk die Reisebeschreibung mit politischen und philosophischen Betrachtungen. In seinem unverwechselbarem Stil stellte er dabei seine „illegalen“ Gedanken in den Vordergrund, die er sozusagen versteckt als „Konterbande“, als Schmuggelgut, mit sich führe. Schon am 4. Oktober 1844 wurde das Buch in Preußen verboten und beschlagnahmt. Am 12. Dezember 1844 erließ König Friedrich Wilhelm IV. von Preußen einen Haftbefehl gegen Heine. Heines Versepos war bis in unsere Zeit hinein in Deutschland sehr umstritten. Vor allem im Jahrhundert seiner Entstehung bet...

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History, Poetry, Politics, Literature, Travel, Satire

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In an era before the advent of electric lights, telephones or motor vehicles, there exists a small cluster of aristocratic old revolutionary stock families that rule New York's social life. Under the rules of this society, being things is better than doing things and reputation and outward appearances come at the exclusion of everything else. In this Gilded Age, when America’s expansion and increased industrialism produce a group of newly wealthy robber barons and financiers, the patient, time-honored values of the old ruling class, and century, are giving way to the expediencies of the new. Caught at this cusp, a triangle of lovers, who must choose between the expectations of family and society, and the deepest yearnings of the heart. Newly engaged couple, Newland Archer, a young lawyer, and May Welland, a society debutante, are part of the old world, where the right people follow the correct rules and marry into acceptable families. The arrival from Europe of May’s cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, complicates their union, as Ellen’s mysterious past threatens to cast a shadow of scandal over the newly betrothed couple. Newland A...

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Poetry

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An original essay on Poetic translation.

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1. A New and Present Life 2. The Sacred Marriage 3. The Retrieval of Meaning 4. The Ghost in the Machine 5. The Disease of Translation 6. Another Voice...

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The Song of Songs [of Solomon] (שִׁיר הַשִּׁירִים Šîr haŠîrîm, ᾎσμα ᾎσμάτων Aisma Aismatōn, Cantĭcum Canticōrum) is a poetic courtship that moves from enchantment to consummation. Devoid of religiosity, it has traditionally been understood as metaphor for the relationship of the soul with the Divine – of God with Israel – of Christ with the Church – of Christ with the human soul – or humanistically, as a metaphor for psychological integrity. In his 12th century sermon, ‘On the Title of the Book: The Song of Songs’, St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s meditative reading followed the book of Ecclesiastes, which teaches ‘how to … have done with the false promise of this world’, and the book of Proverbs that enlightens ‘your life and your conduct’. He called these two preliminary books antidotes to the two enemies of the soul – ‘misguided love of the world and an excessive love of self’, and he observed that only ‘the mind disciplined by persevering study’ is made ‘ripe … for nuptial union with the divine partner’. His spiritual marriage between the heavenly Bridegroom and the human bride occurs when the two become one, and that one is the ...

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A wise man once set down in song, beauty that in nature rests, for which all hearts forever long like dreams deep in maidens’ breasts : The young woman: “My man, your kiss is my mantle your musk clothes me with alarm, allows my guard be more gentle. Oh, who could resist such charm! Oh, let’s elope to foreign parts, and reveal to me your realm; there let us practice lovers’ arts for we’ll both be overwhelmed. Yes, no one could resist such charm! Sisters of our sober town, You see my skin so sunned from farm, its like a richly gilded gown – a noble robe gifting my hue. Though born beyond your boudoir, underneath I’m the same as you. Why look down on my colour, ...

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n.a.

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A book of poems written by Florentin Smarandache whilst he was experiencing a dark time in life.

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EPILOGUE I leave you with my poems. Feel through me! I have achieves this volume in three years, but read it in T E N! It is a hut from the outside, and maybe a castle inside. (this volume holds connections with the earth!) The book has me between its covers - but now it is in its agony: ...

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Motto - 6 SHORT (AUTO)BIOGRAPHY - 7 THE MANIFESTO – PROGRAM - 9 =INAPPROPRIATE WORDS MADE APPROPRIATE= - 17 PEOPLE ARE FLYING THROUGH PEOPLE - 18 THE PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY - 19 OLD AGE WITHOUT YOUTH - 20 SCIENCE AND ART - 21 THIS OTHER WORLD - 22 VIVE LA PAIX! - 23 A NEEDED DRUG - 24 WESTERN POETRY - 25 PAZVANTE THE BLIND - 26 PHYSICAL EDUCATION / OF THE NERVES - 27 GEORGE DEVIL - 28 AT WORK: / WOMEN WITHOUT WORK - 29 ANTI-POEM OF LOVE - 30 ON WIMBLEY, IN BĂNIE - 31 COURSE OF GERMAN LANGUAGE - 33 FUSS WITH FISH – 34 PORTRAIT OF A GIRL - 35 SHE AND HE - 36 VIBRATIONS ON A SENSITIVE STRING - 37 A POSITIVE MINUS - 38 FRAGMENT OF FRAGMENT - 39 THE UNREAL IS REALITY - 40 BUREAUCRACY - 41 I LIVED MY LIFE / THE DYING WAY - 42 THE FIGHT OF OPPOSITES - 43 GO AHEAD, PLEASE! - 44 THEATER IN ABSURD - 45 HEARING AT GOD - 46 CITIZEN EDUCATION - 47 SCENE OF SCENERY - 48 DIALOGUE AT LONG DISTANCE - 49 THEATER ACTING - 50 DEMETER HAS DIED - 51 I EXIST AGAINST MYSELF - 52 ALLOW ME TO BE MYSELF - 53 CRIME WITHOUT PUNISHMENT - 54 LESSON OF PHILOSOPHY - 55 FLYING MANUAL - 56 PEACE TO YOU, LOVE - 57 LONG COUR...

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A new edition of the sonnets of William Shakespeare complete and unabridged. ISBN: 978-1-932023-43-5. https://www.facebook.com/williamralpheditions

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138: When My Love Swears That She Is Made of Truth When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutored youth, Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O love’s best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told. Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flattered be....

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By Way of Introduction 1: From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase 2: When Forty Winters Shall Besiege Thy Brow 3: Look in Thy Glass and Tell the Face Thou Viewest 4: Unthrifty Loveliness Why Dost Thou Spend 5: Those Hours That with Gentle Work Did Frame 6: Then Let Not Winter's Ragged Hand Deface 7: Lo in the Orient When the Gracious Light 8: Music to Hear Why Hear'st Thou Music Sadly 9: Is It For Fear to Wet a Widow's Eye 10: For Shame Deny That Thou Bear'st Love to Any 11: As Fast As Thou Shalt Wane So Fast Thou Growest 12: When I Do Count the Clock That Tells the Time 13: O That You Were Yourself But Love You Are 14: Not from the Stars Do I My Judgment Pluck 15: When I Consider Every Thing That Grows 16: But Wherefore Do Not You a Mightier Way 17: Who Will Believe My Verse in Time to Come 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day 19: Devouring Time Blunt Thou the Lion's Paws 20: A Woman's Face with Nature's Own Hand Painted 21: So Is It Not with Me As with That Muse 22: My Glass Shall Not Persuade Me I Am Old 23: As an Unperfect Actor on the Stage 24: Mine Eye Hath Play'd the Painter and hath Stelled 2...

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A complete collection of the poems of William Blake. Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, engraver, and painter. Early in his life, his unique and deceptively simple poems marked the beginning of Romanticism, particularly those from his volumes Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794). Later work evolved into long mythological pieces informed by visions Blake claimed to have throughout his life. This volume collects all his poetic output, including those unfinished fragments in manuscript form....

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The Tyger 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?...

Table of Contents Details
Introduction POETICAL SKETCHES To Spring To Summer To Autumn To Winter To the Evening Star To Morning Fair Elenor Song (How sweet I roam'd...) Song (My silks and fine array...) Song (Love and harmony combine...) Song (I love the jocund dance...) Song (Memory, hither come...) Mad Song Song (Fresh from the dewy hill...) Song (When early morn walks forth...) To the Muses Gwin, King of Norway An Imitation of Spenser Blind Man’s Buff King Edward the Third Prologue, Intended for a Dramatic Piece of King Edward the Fourth Prologue to King John A War Song to Englishmen The Couch of Death Contemplation Samson Song 1st by a Young Shepherd Song 2nd by a Young Shepherd Song by an Old Shepherd AN ISLAND IN THE MOON SONG OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE Songs of Innocence: Introduction The Shepherd The Ecchoing Green The Lamb The Little Black Boy The Blossom The Chimney Sweeper The Little Boy Lost The Little Boy Found Laughing Song A Cradle Song The Divine Image Holy Thursday Night Spring Nurse’s Song Infant Joy A Dream On Anothers Sorrow Songs of Experience: Introduction Earth’s Answer The Clod & ...

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Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is widely considered to be the best poet of the Augustan age, and perhaps English verse’s best satirist ever. Pope was mostly self-taught having been denied a formal protestant education because of his family’s Roman Catholic beliefs; he also suffered from the effects of Pott’s disease his entire life, which left him deformed and of small stature never growing past the height of four feet six inches. Despite these challenges, Pope flourished in English society and was likely its first professional literary writer having garnered significant income from the sales of books to the public as opposed to traditional patronages, capitalizing mostly on his excellent translations of Homer and an edited edition of Shakespeare. A close friend of Jonathan Swift in their famous Scriblerus Club, he was quite famous in his time, and while his reputation declined in the 19th century, he is now considered the most canonical poet of his era and the true master of the heroic couplet (followed closely by his predecessor, John Dryden) and English poetic satire. This edition of his poems collects all of his major work, and most...

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from "Essay on Criticism" “Tis hard to say if greater want of skill Appear in writing or in judging ill; But of the two less dangerous is th’ offence To tire our patience than mislead our sense: Some few in that, but numbers err in this; Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss; A fool might once himself alone expose; Now one in verse makes many more in prose.     ’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own. In Poets as true Genius is but rare, True Taste as seldom is the Critic’s share; Both must alike from Heav’n derive their light, These born to judge, as well as those to write. Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well; Authors are partial to their wit, ’tis true, But are not Critics to their judgment too? “    Yet if we look more closely, we shall find Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind: Nature affords at least a glimm’ring light; The lines, tho’ touch’d but faintly, are drawn right: But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced, Is by ill col’ring but the more disgraced, So by false learning is good sens...

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Introduction Ode on Solitude A Paraphrase (On Thomas à Kempis) To the Author of a Poem Entitled Successio The First Book of Statius’s Thebais Imitation of Chaucer Imitation of Spenser: The Alley Imitation of Waller: On a Lady Singing to Her Lute Imitation of Waller: On a Fan of the Author’s Design Imitation of Abraham Cowley: The Garden Imitation of Abraham Cowley: Weeping Imitation of Earl of Rochester: On Silence Imitation of Earl of Dorset: Artemisia Imitation of Earl of Dorset: Phryne Imitation of Dr. Swift: The Happy Life of a Country Parson Pastorals I. Spring; or, Damon II. Summer; or, Alexis III. Autumn; or, Hylas and Ægon IV. Winter; or, Daphne Windsor Forest Paraphrases from Chaucer January and May; or, The Merchant’s Tale The Wife of Bath The Temple of Fame Translations from Ovid Sappho to Phaon The Fable of Dryope Vertumnus and Pomona An Essay on Criticism Part I Part II Part III Ode for Music on St. Cecilia’s Day Argus The Balance of Europe The Translator On Mrs. Tofts, a Famous Opera-Singer Epistle to Mrs. Blount, with the Works of Voiture Adriani Morientis Ad Animam Epistle to M...

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NonNovel is indeed a novel of drawer, carried year after year in the bottomless sack of the exile. This fierce parabola about totalitarianism, about alienation, guilty obedience and lie, opportunism, cruelty, violence, monstrosity, written in a strong tensioned and lacking bashfulness style, situates Florentin Smarandache closer by Orwell, Konwicki, Koestler, Baconsky, and marks a new dimension of the Paradoxism....

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Mybreathin gstops Mybrea thingstops Myb reath ings tops Mybreathingstops Mybreat hin gsto ps M ybreath ingstops My breathing stops

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WARNING!: 5 Mister Editor (a letter arrived at the editorial office): 6 I: 7 Dedication: 10 The Adventures of Hon Hyn: 11 Happenings from Wodania: 23 II: 26 About patriotism: 28 The royal feast: 29 The press: 30 Post Office: 31 The State control: 32 Non-values’ Epoch: 36 Pluralism: 43 A leader not like anyone else: 45 Invisible barriers: 46 The graduates’ allocation: 49 The lunatic asylum: 50 The abolishing of the difference between man and animal: 56 III: 59 The Earthquake: 60 Modern gallinacean: 62 The crop of pea: 63 The peasantry: 64 The intellectuality: 66 A little meditation does not hurt: 67 The Fonfoist Party: 69 An unsafe life was provided to us: 70 A certain kind of speech: 72 The Fonfoist Society: 83 “We will live here in abundance”: 87 The multilateral development of personality: 93 The Police and the Revolution: 95 Imposing buildings of prisons: 97 Football: 99 Public genuflection: 100 The contemporary history: 102 Hon Hyn’s visit to Paris: 103 The National Museum: 104 The Management of the Economical Systems: 105 A few notions of psychology: 106 (editor’s note): 109 The wise po...

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Etymologically, aphorism + floral = aph(L)orism, which is a short reflection written on a floral design, or a short poetry accompanied by an artistic background. They are colorful contemplations. Maximus in minimis (Lat.) means very much in very little [max in min], or condensed thought, or ideating essence. They are actually maxims, adages, sayings mostly in one line (uni-stich) with a title, as a metaphoric statement, a breathing momentum that oils our soul....

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Nonchalantly : The wind with its mantle steps lightly. Skin Condition : The Sun has spots too. At what time? When it rains, God cries. Atmosphere : Blue, as the sky dirtied by clouds. Bright : A balcony full of Sun. Natural disaster : The swans look drunk on the fetid lake. Surprisingly : The crow is a beautiful black. Elegant woman : A bird high on her legs. Most powerful chess piece : You are a queen but only in the dark. Medicinal plant : You’re a flower but amongst weeds. Force that attracts food : The stomach’s gravitation pulls me to food....

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Passion.......................................................................23 Worthless.....................................................................23 Tired of you....................................................................23 Tittle-tattle....................................................................23 Talk is cheep...................................................................24 Give the man what he doesn’t have.................................................24 Novel for (non) writers...........................................................24 Desolate......................................................................24 Did I have the pleasure...........................................................24 Sloppy work....................................................................25 Despicable.....................................................................25 Wanted.......................................................................25 Talking in vain..................................................................25 Use caplets.....................................................

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A charming autobiographical 'coming of age' story about a young girl, Mary Marie, whose young life is thrown into turmoil as her parents divorce. As she leads two lives, she comes to realize that her parents still love one another, and engineers a reunion. In the end, we discover the long-lasting effect of this turmoil on the adult Mary Marie, and her own marriage. (summary by Lynne Thompson)...

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Fiction, Romance, Teen/Young adult, Poetry

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Excerpt: Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte).

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Contents POEMS BY CURRER BELL ........................................................................7 PILATE?S WIFE?S DREAM ....................................................................................................................................... 7 MEMENTOS ............................................................................................................................................................. 11 THE WIFE?S WILL.................................................................................................................................................... 16 THE WOOD ............................................................................................................................................................... 18 FRANCES................................................................................................................................................................... 21 GILBERT.................................................................................................................................................................... 27 LIFE ..........................

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The Book of Psalms, commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible. Taken together, its 150 poems express virtually the full range of Israel's religious faith. They each have a poetic character with frequent use of parallelism. In addition to the title of the collection, which translates as song or hymns from both Hebrew and Greek, superscriptions (or headings) in many of the Psalms provide musical references and some direction, in some cases even references to melodies that would have been well known by early congregations. Songs that can be identified as such in the Psalms include songs of thanksgiving (e.g., Ps 30), hymns of praise (e.g., Ps 117) and royal psalms, which may have been used in coronations and weddings. Identification of some psalms as prayers is also seen within the text, for example in the conclusion to Psalm 72, The prayers of David son of Jesse are ended. The largest category of Psalms, though not grouped as such in the text, is that of lament (expressions of complaint and pleas for help from God). There appears to also have been an instructional function of the psal...

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Poetry, Religion

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volunteers bring you 11 recordings of Departerd Days by Oliver Wendell Holmes. This was the Weekly Poetry project for May 8, 2011. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was an American physician, professor, lecturer, and author. Regarded by his peers as one of the best writers of the 19th century, he is considered a member of the Fireside Poets. His most famous prose works are the Breakfast-Table series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He is recognized as an important medical reformer. 1830 proved to be an important year for Holmes as a poet; while disappointed by his law studies, he began writing poetry for his own amusement.[22] Before the end of the year, he had produced over fifty poems, contributing twenty-five of them (all unsigned) to The Collegian, a short-lived publication started by friends from Harvard. Four of these poems would ultimately become among his best-known: The Dorchester Giant, Reflections of a Proud Pedestrian, Evening / By a Tailor and The Height of the Ridiculous. Nine more of his poems were published anonymously in the 1830 pamphlet Illustrations of the Athenaeum Gallery of Paintings. (su...

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Instruction, Nature, Philosophy, Poetry

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The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake several places in the Marriage. Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg's conventional moral structures and his Manichean view of good and evil led Blake to express a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are equally part of the divine order, hence, a marriage of heaven and hell. The book is written in prose, except for the opening Argument and the Song of Liberty. The book describes the poet's visit to Hell, a device adopted by Blake from Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost....

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Literature, Philosophy, Satire, Poetry

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volunteers bring you 15 recordings of Petals by Amy Lowell. This was the Weekly Poetry project for November 27, 2011. Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Lowell was born into Brookline's prominent Lowell family, sister to astronomer Percival Lowell and Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell. She never attended college because her family did not consider that proper for a woman, but she compensated with avid reading and near-obsessive book collecting. She lived as a socialite and travelled widely, turning to poetry in 1902 after being inspired by a performance of Eleonora Duse in Europe. In the post-World War II years, Lowell, like other women writers, was largely forgotten, but with the renaissance of the women's movement in the 1970s, women's studies brought her back to light. According to Heywood Broun, however, Lowell personally argued against feminism. Her poem, “Petals” is published in her collection A Dome of Many-Colored Glass (1912). (Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Bob Go...

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Instruction, Nature, Philosophy, Poetry

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volunteers bring you 13 recordings of A Cry From an Indian Wife by E. Pauline Johnson,. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for January 29, 2012. In 1892 the opportunity of a lifetime came to this young versifier, when Frank Yeigh, the president of the Young Liberals' Club, of Toronto, conceived the idea of having an evening of Canadian literature, at which all available Canadian authors should be guests and read from their own works. Among the authors present on this occasion was Pauline Johnson, who contributed to the programme one of her compositions, entitled A Cry from an Indian Wife; and when she recited without text this much-discussed poem, which shows the Indian's side of the North-West Rebellion, she was greeted with tremendous applause from an audience which represented the best of Toronto's art, literature and culture. She was the only one on the programme who received an encore, and to this she replied with one of her favourite canoeing poems. The following morning the entire press of Toronto asked why this young writer was not on the platform as a professional reader; while two of the dailies even contained editori...

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Adventure, Historical Fiction, History, Nature, Politics, Romance, Tragedy, War stories, Poetry