All spoken voice  recordings on  www.eaglesweb.com, its two front pages (index and default) and two alternate front page masters, and its 4,806 other files and directories, excluding image files and music files, are licensed under a Creative Commons License unless otherwise identified on one of the pages. 
eaglesweb.com poetry for the ear in the tradition of blind Homer 

The music you are now hearing is "Barely Breake" (Musica Britannica 92), by William Byrd, a contemporary of Shakespeare.  The work was sequenced by Canadian harpsichordist John Sankey, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for his kind permission to use all of his many recordings on Eaglesweb.com.

POEMA AD LIBITUM, Fortnight III (July 9 - July 22, 2004)
chosen at the discretion of your reader, with his notes where appropriate.

Click HERE for listing for other fortnights of the Poema ad Libitum series.

William Butler Yeats [1865-1939]: "That is no country for old men. . ."
When You Are Old [0:43]
Where My Books Go [0:26]
The Wild Swans at Coole [1:21]
The Song of Wandering Aengus [1:03]
Sailing to Byzantium [1:31]
Lake Isle of Innesfree [3rd recording] [1:10]
Another sampler from the Irish Nobel laureate.

William Butler Yeats [1865-1939]: "Three Roses. . ."
To the Secret Rose [1:58]
The Rose in the Deeps of His Heart [0:45]
The Rose of Battle [2:16]
A sampler from the Irish Nobel laureate.

Edmund Spenser [1552-1599] [prolific English poet and sonneteer]
Sonnet: Easter [0:52]
My recording of Prothalamion is in process, as well as samples from The Faerie Queene.

Sir Philip Sidney [1554-1586]
Come, Sleep, O Sleep [1:00]
My True Love Hath My Heart and I Have His [0:39]
Loving in Truth [1:01]
With How Sad Steps, O Moon [1:00]
Hear also Sir Edward Dyer, below.  Another friend's poetry will be heard tomorrow (Spenser).  A courtier and a knight upon the field as well, he died of wounds suffered in a skirmish against the Spanish in 1586, having taken a musket shot in the thigh that festered unto death twenty two days later. In his life he was a prolific sonneteer in the Petrarchan mode. - W.R.E.

Sir Edward Dyer [1543-1607]
A Modest Love [0:46]
My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is [1:39]
An Elizabethan poet who was friend to Sir Philip Sidney (above) and Edmund Spenser, Dyer was celebrated in his day as an elegist. He was knighted and made Chancellor of the Order of the Garter by Elizabeth I in 1596.  His best-known poem is “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is.”  [from InfoPlease]

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Richard Lovelace:[1618-1657]
One of the English metaphysical poets represented on eaglesweb.com
To Althea from Prison [1:16]
To Amarantha, That She Would Dishevel Her Hair [0:51]
To Lucasta on Going beyond the Seas [0:48]
To Lucasta on Going to the Wars [0:32]

Robert Browning [1812-1889][British]
Memorabilia [0:43]                Pippa's Song [0:19]
My Last Duchess [2:59]      Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister [3:08]

Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861][British] Sonnets From the Portuguese
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. . . [0:52] 
If thou must love me. . . [0:54]
I thought once how Theocritus had sung. . . [0:58]
When our two souls stand up erect and strong. . . [0:54]

The sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay  [1882-1950][American]
I do but ask that you be always fair [0:48]   
I shall go back again to the bleak shore [0:46]
Love is not all [0:51]
If I should learn, in some quite casual way [0:46] 
Recuerdo [1:06] [Not a sonnet]

Millay was a Vassar student of literature well known for her independence.  Upon graduation, she moved to Greenwich Village and lived a bohemian life.  In 1934 she became involved in the infamous case of Sacco & Vanzetti, upon the occasion of the execution of whom she wrote a pair of sonnets in their memory and in condemnation of the "system" she believed had perpetrated a miscarriage of justice. She had several intense relationships with both men and women at Vassar and afterwards in the Village, but married a man who became her manager, the feminist Eugen Boissevain, with whom she lived in an open marriage until his death in 1949.  Her own death followed the next year.   - W.R.E.

George Gordon, Lord Byron [1788-1824]
She Walks in Beauty, Like the Night [0:53]
There Be None of Beauty's Daughters [0:41]
So We'll Go No More a-Roving [0:36]          
A Spirit Passed before Me [0:45]
Euthanasia [1:39]
Love and Death [his last poem] [1:27] Byron died fighting for Greek independence  - W.R.E.

Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909][British poet, playwright, scholar and translator]
Chorus from Atalanta in Calydon [2:47][Swinburne's own play]
Cor Cordium [0:52][from an inscription on Shelley's gravestone]
Sestina [2:09] Click HERE for an explanation of this difficult French poetic form.
To a Cat [2:27] Listen to related poetry -- excerpts from The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot.
A Ballad of Francois Villon [2:17] Click HERE for an explanation of this variable French poetic form.
Coming soon: Sapphics, a technical tour de force in the difficult Greek meter employed by Sappho, and The Garden of Proserpine.  Swinburne's poetic output was so large that it is impossible even to sample it with any hope of thereby casting an understanding light on his work as a whole.  A neglected poet, Swinburne was the first truly modern English poet, who was castigated by the Victorian critics on moral grounds.  - W.R.E.

Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936][British]
If [1:50]
A Death-Bed [2:02]
The first poem  is perhaps the most well-known didactic poem in English.  The second poem came out of Kipling's war experiences during the First World War.  Born, like Yeats, in 1865, Kipling lived almost as long as he did (shy of three years) -- and like Yeats accomplished a rather large literary output.  Both were Nobel laureates. - W.R.E.

Nicholas Breton [1555?-1626][Elizabethan poet]
An Assurance [0:54]
Phillida and Coridon [1:02]
The Passionate Shepherd [1:06]

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Emily Bronte [1818-1848][British]
Often Rebuked [1:10]                    No Coward Soul Is Mine [1:29]
How Clear She Shines [2:01]      A Death Scene [2:09]

D. H. Lawrence [1885-1930][British novelist, poet, and continental & world traveler]
Piano [0:58]
Quite Forsaken [0:43]
Snake [4:15][prose poem, written in Italy]

Thomas Campion [1567-1620] [British lutenist, composer and poet] 
Follow Your Saint [0:48]                                    There Is A Garden In Her Face [0:57]  
Thrice Toss These Oaken Ashes [0:48]        When to Her Lute Corinna Sings [0:40]
Campion was as fluent in writing songs as in writing poetry, and was a musical performer as well, even to the extent of entertaining Queen Elizabeth. - W.R.E.