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William Cartwright [1611-1643]: One of the English metaphysical poets on this website.
On a Virtuous Young Gentlewoman That Died Suddenly [0:49]
On the Queen's Return from the Low Countries [0:54]
A son of Ben Jonson, Cartwright was well-known as a preacher and theologian as well as poet and playwright.  He died at the early age of 32, but was so well-known and appreciated by then that the King dressed in mourning on the day of his death. - W.R.E.

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Alfred, Lord Tennyson [1809-1883]: Ulysses [3:51]  
Hear also Tithonus - another classical theme in monologue form treated at length by Tennyson.  Ulysses is set in the mind of the aging Greek warrior (Odysseus in ancient Greek), at times with direct address to some of his old fellow travellers, coaxing them into one last voyage.  A classic poem for "seniors" of any era.  - W.R.E.

John Donne [1573-1631][English Theologian, Preacher and Poet]:
Meditation XVII: "For whom the bell tolls" [4:16] One of the English metaphysical poets on this website.
Like St. Augustine ("Confessions"), John Donne knew the roadmaps of romantic love and the love of God abut equally, though the ultimate trend in each man's case was never in doubt.  As for the subtitle, this was the name of an American film and novel (Ernest Hemingway's) about one man's fate / courage in the context of the Spanish Civil War.  - W.R.E.

William Blake [1757-1827][English mystic, engraver, painter, poet]: A trio of poems from Songs of Experience:
The Chimney Sweeper [0:36]; The Sick Rose [0:20]; The Tyger [0:59]

Dylan Thomas [1914-1953][Welsh]:
Poem on His Birthday [4:15][his thirty-fifth, four years before his death at 39]
Note (1): A major poem written at the height of his powers but with a certain prescience how his own life was to end.  Note (2): Thomas was not a thoroughgoing original (one fell-swoop proof is his predecessor Gerard Manley Hopkins).  Note (3): If there were such an audio poetry prize as the Homer, surely Dylan Thomas would have been elected to that honor.  We are fortunate to have many audio recordings of his works in his own voice: (Caedmon Collection) - W.R.E.

Rupert Brooke [1887-1915]:
The Fish [1914] [3:30] 
The Soldier ("If I should die, think only this of me. . .")[0:53]
"A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life."
             - quatrain by Frances Cornford [listen]
Click HERE to read Brooke's obituary by Winston Churchill (1915).  Cornford's quatrain, together with the obituary by Churchill, make a powerful summary of what England lost in the passing of this gifted, promising, but never-to-be-great poet.  - W.R.E.

Robert Browning [1812-1889]:
My Last Duchess [3:08] is a self-contained dramatic monologue which deserves repeated hearing and/or reading, not to get the narrative drift but to appreciate Browning's psychological profile of a disreputable character caught up in the cross-currents of autocracy-in-aristocracy.  Compare also Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister [3:08] and The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church (not yet recorded).   - W.R.E.

Andrew Marvell [1621-1678]:
To His Coy Mistress [2:06]  
This poem, from the Metaphysical Poets movement that followed the Elizabethan period, was a favorite of T. S. Eliot, as it has been mine for all of my life  - W.R.E.

Thomas Hardy  [1840-1928]:
      The Darkling Thrush [1:17]
      The Convergence of the Twain (Lines on the loss of theTitanic) [1:28]
      The Going [1:46]
These are my favorite poems by the great novelist Thomas Hardy.  The first two strive to restrain Form from a natural dominance (and succeed), while the last one strives, similarly, to restrain Substance and succeeds brilliantly.  - W.R.E.  (P.S.  A large number of Hardy's poems will be appearing on this site during the year 2004.)

William Butler Yeats [1865-1939]:
   The Wild Swans at Coole [1:21]
   Lake Isle of Innesfree [3rd recording][1:14]
   Sailing to Byzantium [1:31]
   Yeats received the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1923, and is Ireland's greatest playwright and poet.  His writings influenced the next generation of British poets: Listen to the memorial poem by W. H. Auden, In Memory of W. B. Yeats.  "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry." and ". . . for poetry makes nothing happen . . ."  My personal favorites are the three poems above.  - W.R.E.

Edward Thomas [1878-1917]: Words [1:15]  See also British, American and Canadian Poets of World War I.  Thomas was encouraged in his poetry by the American poet Robert Frost.  - W.R.E.