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 "Sellingers Rownde " [Musica Britannica 84] by William Byrd, a contemporary of Shakespeare.  The work was sequenced by internationally renowned 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 VI (August 20 - September 2, 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.

Sir Thomas Wyatt [1503-1542][English]
A Supplication [0:46][sonnet]
Lover's Appeal [0:50][sonnet]
My Galley [0:51][sonnet]
Is it Possible [1:14][recorded today, September 2, at 0244 GMT

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

Edmund Waller [1606-1687]
The Self Banished [0:53]
Of the Last Verses in the Book [1:00]
Go Lovely Rose [0:46] Hear also: Ezra Pound [1885-1972]:[0:46] Hear also: Ezra Pound [1885-1972]:Envoi [1:04]   And just for fun, hear my parody of Go Lovely Rose [1:00] a voiceover falsetto in the character of the fictional elder Duchess of Blackpool as portrayed by Sir Alec Guinness in his movie, The Horse's Mouth.  With apologies to Sir Alec (may he rest in peace).  This poem is a comment on the transitory nature of physical beauty, from a member of the Metaphysical Poets of the Seventeenth Century.  Compare Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress, also by a Metaphysical Poet.  Several similar poems exist in this anthology from the Elizabethan Era. - W.R.E.

Sir Charles Sedley [1639-1701][British Restoration Period poet]
Not, Celia, That I Juster Am [0:43]
Song from The Mulberry Garden [1:17]
Love Still Has Something of the Sea [1:08]

[no picture]

TODAY'S THREE POSTINGS ARE A CELEBRATION OF MY 70th BIRTHDAY:
THREE-SCORE AND TEN! - W.R.E.

John Dowland [1563-1626][English.  Elizabethan lutenist]
Come Again: Sweet Love Doth Now Invite [0:55]  A motto associated with him: Semper Dowland, semper dolens.  ("Always Dowland, always sad")

TODAY'S THREE POSTINGS ARE A CELEBRATION OF MY 70th BIRTHDAY:
THREE-SCORE AND TEN! - W.R.E.

Robert Graves [1895-1985][Welsh]
In the Wilderness [1:07] [Recorded today  2135 GMT]
Sorley's Weather [0:42]
Warning to Children [1:25]
To Lucasta on Going to the War—for the Fourth Time [1:05] Hear also:
To Lucasta on Going to the Wars [0:32] by Richard Lovelace [1618-1657][English]

TODAY'S THREE POSTINGS ARE A CELEBRATION OF MY 70th BIRTHDAY:
THREE-SCORE AND TEN! - W.R.E.

William Shakespeare [1564–1616][English actor, playwright, director and poet]: 
Seven Monologues from Tragedies, Comedies and Histories:
Hamlet's Soliloquy, from Hamlet, (III,i) ("To be or not to be. . .")[2:00 ]
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,  from Macbeth (V, verses 19-28) [0:53]
All the World's a Stage, from As You Like It [1:32]
Our Revels Now Are Ended,  from The Tempest (IV, i) [0:40]
Caliban's Monologue: All the infections that the sun sucks up, from The Tempest (II,ii) [0:53]
Clarence's Monologue from Richard III [2:54]
Richard's Monologue from Richard III [2:38]

Lord Alfred Douglas [1870-1945][shown at right with friend Oscar Wilde on left]
Three Sonnets:
Not All the Singers of A Thousand Years [1:10] with "dedication" to Oscar's enemies
The City of the Soul: II [0:50]
To Olive [0:46]

Siegfried Sassoon [1886-1967][British war poet - WWI]
Repression of War Experience [1918][2:11]
Sick Leave [1918][0:46]
Thrushes [1918] [0:40]
Together [1918][0:48]
A Whispered Tale [1918][0:55] 

Henry Reed [1914-1986][British poet and radio broadcaster]
The Naming of Parts [1:41]
Reed was a contributor to the BBC audio broadcasts and a critic of the principle and practice of war.  - W.R.E.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard [6:56]
"The language of the age is never the language of poetry;" Thomas Gray, Letter to Richard West, 8 April 1742.  This advice, coming from a master of the Greek Odes, could well be learned in the present time. - W.R.E.

Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]:[Irish & British poet and playwright]
(Half a "sonnet of sonnets" from one of England's greatest and most tragic of poets, born a century before his time)
Sonnet: Amor Intellectualis [0:46]  Sonnet: The Grave of Keats [1881][0:50] 
Sonnet: Madonna Mia [0:54]       Sonnet: Ave Maria plena Gratia [1881][0:53] 
Sonnet Written in Holy Week at Genoa [0:55]   Sonnet: Easter Day [0:53]
Sonnet on Hearing the Dies Irae Sung in the Sistine Chapel [0:53] 
My recording of Wilde's long poem "Ballad of Reading Gaol" is in progress.  - W.R.E.