Broken heart poems for those hard times.

Read by Ghizela Rowe, Alex Jennings & Richard Mitchley (Unabridged: 59mins)

Featuring poems by WIlliam Shakespeare, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, Christina Georgina Rossetti, Wilfred Owen, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, Edith Nesbit & more.

The beating heart, the drumbeat, the very force of life.  What then when we say ‘it breaks’? ‘I’m heart-broken’? Few of us escape a life without some measure of heartache and the pain it causes. 

In this volume we give full rein to our classic poets across the centuries from Shakespeare and Aphra Behn to Rupert Brooke, Edna St Vincent Millay, A E Housman and continue through Radclyffe Hall, Emily Dickinson and Oscar Wilde.

It is a journey through feelings, thoughts and expressions in words that we instantly understand, claim as our own and yet reveal other layers, other avenues of thought.

Whether to soothe the soul, to reconcile with a different perhaps fractured reality, and come to terms with dejection, rejection or vent with bitterness, rage and seek revenge, our poets have words and lines of verse to help balm, repair and better understand these emotional times.

In this compilation -  

01 - 50 Shades of a Broken Heart - An Introduction

02 - Ebb by Edna St Vincent Millay

03 - Heart We Will Forget Him by Emily Dickinson

04 - I Prithee Send Me Back My Heart by Sir John Suckling

05 - Loves Lies Bleeding by Algernon Charles Swinburne

06 - My Own Heart, Let Me Have More, Have Pity by Gerard Manley Hopkins

07 - They Flee From Me by Sir Thomas Wyatt

08 - The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by John Bodenham

09 - Love Arm'd by Aphra Behn

10 - A Shropshire Lad LIV - With Rue My Heart is Laden by A.E. Housman

11 - A Poor Torn Heart, a Tattered Heart by Emily Dickinson

12 - Doubting Heart by Adelaide Anne Proctor

13 - A Careless Heart by Isaac Rosenberg

17 - My Heart is Lame by Charlotte Mew

15 - A Fallen Leaf by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

16 - Helas! by Oscar Wilde

17 - A Pause of Thought by Christina Georgina Rossetti

18 - A Broken Appointment by Thomas Hardy

19 - The Last Betrayal by Edith Nesbit

20 - Greater Love by Wilfred Owen

21 - In the Tavern of My Heart by Willa Cather

22 - Hearts First Word I by Isaac Rosenberg

23 - I Have Loved Flowers That Fade by Robert Seymour Bridges

24 - I So Like Spring by Charlotte Mew

25 - What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why by Edna St Vincent Millay

64 - Renouncement by Alice Meynell

27 - A Shropshire Lad XXXIII - If Truth in Hearts That Perish by A.E. Housman

28 - The Forsaken Lover Consoleth Himself With Rememberance of Past Happiness by Sir Thomas Wyatt

29 - Sonnet 139 - O! Call Not Me to Justify the Wrong by William Shakespeare

06 - Love and Folly by Charlotte Smith

31 - No One So Much As You by Edward Thomas

32 - Sonnet 87 - Farewell! Thou Art Too Dear for My Possessing by William Shakespeare

33 - Love's Farewell by Michael Drayton

34 - The Given Heart by Abraham Cowley

35 - Jilted by Radclyffe Hall

36 - Jealously by Rupert Brooke

09 - Love and Hate by Elizabeth Siddal

38 - Amour XXX Three Sorts of Serpents Do Resemble Thee by Michael Drayton

28 - Revenge by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

40 - Modern Love II by George Meredith

41 - To the Ladies by Lady Mary Chudleigh

42 - Divorce by Anna Wickham

10 - Dead Love by Elizabeth Siddal

44 - Modern Love I by George Meredith

45 - When We Two Parted by Lord Byron

46 - We Parted in Silence by Isabella Valancy Crawford

47 - Sailing Beyond Seas by Jean Ingelow

48 - If Thou Wilt Ease Thine Heart by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

49 - I Shall Not Care by Sara Teasdale

50 - Dead Men's Love by Rupert Brooke

51 - He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead by W B Yeats