The World's Best Poetry, Volume 7: Descriptive and Narrative (Part 1)


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The seventh of ten volumes of poetry edited by Canadian poet laureate Bliss Carman (1861-1929). This collection, the first of two parts, contains a variety of odes, elegies, addresses, epitaphs and dedications that praise, mourn and remember some of history's greatest and most memorable statesmen (such as Napoleon Bonaparte, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln) and writers (such as William Shakespeare, John Milton, Charles Dickens and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). The collection also includes an introductory essay by author and poet Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947). - Summary by Tomas Peter

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What's the Use of Poetry? by Richard Le Gallienne 25:20 Read by LibriVox Volunteers
To the Spring: From 'Hymnes of Astræa, in Acrosticke Verse' by Sir John Davies 1:22 Read by Craig Franklin
To Mary Stuart by Pierre de Ronsard 3:10 Read by Adrian Stephens
To the Lord-General Cromwell by John Milton 1:25 Read by Jason in Panama
O, Breathe Not His Name! (Robert Emmet) by Thomas Moore 0:59 Read by Sonia
Charles XII: From 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' by Dr. Samuel Johnson 2:22 Read by Sonia
Napoleon by Victor Hugo 2:41 Read by Tomas Peter
Napoleon: From 'Childe Harold,' Canto III by Lord Byron 6:02 Read by Craig Franklin
On the Monument erected to Mazzini at Genoa by Algernon Charles Swinburne 2:36 Read by Sonia
George Washington by Anonymous 0:43 Read by Adrian Stephens
Washington by James Russell Lowell 7:36 Read by Tomas Peter
Daniel Webster by Oliver Wendell Holmes 3:14 Read by Craig Franklin
William Lloyd Garrison by James Russell Lowell 3:26 Read by Sonia
Henry Ward Beecher by Charles Henry Phelps 2:05 Read by Adrian Stephens
Abraham Lincoln (Foully Assassinated April 14, 1865) by Tom Taylor 5:38 Read by Jason in Panama
O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman 2:15 Read by Tomas Peter
On the Life-Mask of Lincoln by Richard Watson Gilder 1:19 Read by Adrian Stephens
The Hand of Lincoln by Edmund Clarence Stedman 2:59 Read by Jason in Panama
Abraham Lincoln: From the Harvard Commemoration Ode, July 21, 1865 by James Russell Lowell 4:23 Read by Craig Franklin
Albert, Prince Consort of England: From 'Idyls of the King' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 3:41 Read by Craig Franklin
To Virgil by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 2:46 Read by Sonia
In a Copy of Omar Khayyám by James Russell Lowell 1:15 Read by Craig Franklin
To Madame de Sevigné (Playing Blind-Man's Buff) by Mathieu de Montreuil 0:46 Read by Tomas Peter
George Sand by Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1:19 Read by Jason in Panama
To Victor Hugo by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1:14 Read by Sonia
On a Bust of Dante by Thomas William Parsons 3:09 Read by Sonia
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) by Edmund Gosse 3:08 Read by Adrian Stephens
Sir Philip Sidney: From 'An Elegy on a Friend's Passion for His Astrophill' by Matthew Roydon 1:34 Read by Craig Franklin
To the Memory of Ben Jonson by John Cleveland 1:22 Read by Tomas Peter
Ode to Ben Jonson by Robert Herrick 1:18 Read by Tomas Peter
On the Portrait of Shakespeare by Ben Jonson 0:59 Read by Jason in Panama
To the Memory of My Beloved Master, William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us by Ben Jonson 4:28 Read by Sonia
Shakespeare: From 'Prologue' by Dr. Samuel Johnson 1:10 Read by Jason in Panama
An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare by John Milton 1:33 Read by Craig Franklin
Shakespeare by Hartley Coleridge 1:18 Read by Jason in Panama
Guilielmus Rex by Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1:15 Read by Sonia
Hierarchy of Angels by Thomas Heywood 1:04 Read by Craig Franklin
Under the Portrait of John Milton (Prefixed to 'Paradise Lost') by John Dryden 0:55 Read by Sonia
To Milton ('London, 1802') by William Wordsworth 1:27 Read by Tomas Peter
Walton's Book of Lives: From 'Ecclesiastical Sonnets,' Part III by William Wordsworth 1:23 Read by Jason in Panama
The Sonnet by William Wordsworth 1:14 Read by Sonia
Camp-Bell (Charade) by Winthrop Mackworth Praed 1:45 Read by Jason in Panama
To Thomas Moore by Lord Byron 1:22 Read by Craig Franklin
Shelley by Alexander Hay Japp 1:19 Read by Tomas Peter
Memorabilia by Robert Browning 1:08 Read by Sonia
Byron: From 'The Course of Time,' Book IV by Robert Pollok 3:06 Read by Craig Franklin
Macaulay as Poet by Walter Savage Landor 1:19 Read by Adrian Stephens
On the Departure of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotsford, for Naples by William Wordsworth 1:23 Read by Tomas Peter
To the Memory of Thomas Hood by Bartholomew Simmons 2:03 Read by Craig Franklin
Burns (A Poet's Epitaph) by Ebenezer Elliott 1:42 Read by Tomas Peter
Burns (On Receiving a Sprig of Heather in Blossom) by John Greenleaf Whittier 5:43 Read by Sonia
To Benjamin Robert Haydon by John Keats 1:10 Read by Sonia
On a Portrait of Wordsworth (By B.R. Haydon) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1:22 Read by Adrian Stephens
The Lost Leader by Robert Browning 3:47 Read by Craig Franklin
Memorial Verses (April, 1850) by Matthew Arnold 4:46 Read by Tomas Peter
From 'Wordsworth's Grave' by William Watson 2:00 Read by Tomas Peter
In Memory of Walter Savage Landor by Algernon Charles Swinburne 2:52 Read by Jason in Panama
A Welcome to 'Boz' (On His First Visit to the West) by W.H. Venable 4:44 Read by Adrian Stephens
Dickens in Camp by Bret Harte 2:35 Read by Tomas Peter
Dickens by Algernon Charles Swinburne 1:24 Read by Adrian Stephens
To Thackeray by Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton 1:03 Read by Tomas Peter
Tennyson by Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1:52 Read by Sonia
Lachrymæ Musarum (6th October, 1892) by William Watson 8:10 Read by Adrian Stephens
Robert Browning by Walter Savage Landor 1:23 Read by Jason in Panama
The Burial of Robert Browning by Michael Field 2:32 Read by Adrian Stephens
Joseph Rodman Drake (Died in New York, September, 1820) by Fitz-Greene Halleck 1:37 Read by Jason in Panama
Fitz-Greene Halleck by John Greenleaf Whittier 3:12 Read by Tomas Peter
Poe's Cottage at Fordham by John Henry Boner 2:41 Read by Craig Franklin
On the Death of Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot by Algernon Charles Swinburne 1:20 Read by Sonia
Carlyle and Emerson by Montgomery Schuyler 1:08 Read by Adrian Stephens
Emerson (Concord) by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (Susan Coolidge) 3:31 Read by Jason in Panama
Lowell on Himself: From 'A Fable for Critics' by James Russell Lowell 1:13 Read by Craig Franklin
Out from Behind This Mask: To Confront His Own Portrait for 'The Wound Dresser' in 'Leaves of Grass' by Walt Whitman 2:47 Read by Adrian Stephens
Myself: From 'The Song of Myself' by Walt Whitman 1:26 Read by Craig Franklin
Hawthorne by Edmund Clarence Stedman 1:54 Read by Jason in Panama
Hawthorne by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 2:19 Read by Jason in Panama
Harriet Beecher Stowe by Paul Laurence Dunbar 1:18 Read by Adrian Stephens
To Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (On His Birthday, 27th February, 1867) by James Russell Lowell 2:48 Read by Jason in Panama
Longfellow (In Memoriam) by Austin Dobson 1:33 Read by Adrian Stephens
House by Robert Browning 2:31 Read by Adrian Stephens
Art Criticism by Walter Savage Landor 1:12 Read by Craig Franklin
Anne Hathaway (To the Idol of My Eye and Delight of My Heart, Anne Hathaway) by Anonymous 2:59 Read by Tomas Peter
The Poet's Friend (Lord Bolingbroke): From 'An Essay on Man,' Epistle IV by Alexander Pope 1:51 Read by Sonia
A Bard's Epitaph by Robert Burns 1:50 Read by Adrian Stephens
Chopin by Emma Lazarus 4:18 Read by Tomas Peter
The Prayer of Agassiz by John Greenleaf Whittier 4:38 Read by Sonia
Kane (Died February 16, 1857) by Fitz-James O’Brien 6:06 Read by Jason in Panama