A celebration of English poems

Read by Richard Mitchley, Jo Wyatt, Ghizela Rowe (Unabridged: 2hrs 42mins)

Featuring poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Thomas Hardy & many more

Poetry. A form of words that seems so elegantly simple in one verse and so cleverly complex in another.  Each poet has a particular style, an individual and unique way with words and yet each of us seems to recognise the path and destination of where the verses lead, even if sometimes the full comprehension may be a little beyond us.

Through the centuries every culture has produced verse to symbolize and to describe everything from everyday life, natural wonders, the human condition and even in its more hubristic moments, the crushing triumph of an enemy.

In the volumes of this series, we take a look at poetry through the prism of individual regions of England, or sometimes more quaintly known as ‘Albion’, or ‘Blighty’, through the centuries of its gloried history.

England, despite its perception of reserve and under-statement has, in reality, strode the global stage at various time in many things, both good and bad, from Empire to long distance running. Here our focus in on its literature.  Famed for its fiction and dramas, it is equally admired for its plethora of gifted poets and the dazzling verse which has added so much to its artistic legacy.  These classic poets are wonders of their age and of their art.  Genius is written in their names.

In this volume we have collected verse from poets born in the East of England.  These flat lowlands face out towards Europe yet within their counties are centuries of poetical history that indelibly mark out their talents as among our very best.

In this compilation - 

1 - Born in England - Exploring English Poetry - The South-West - An Introduction

2 - A Song - Men of England by Percy Shelley

3 - Ode to Liberty by Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 - A Summer Evening Churchyard by Percy Bysshe Shelley

5 - Frost At Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

6 - Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

7 - Fancy in Nubibus or The Poet in the Clouds  by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

8 - Sonnet VII - To the Evening Rainbow by Robert Southey

9 - My Days Among the Dead Are Past by Robert Southey

10 - Inchcape Rock by Robert Southey

11 - Rain on a Grave by Thomas Hardy

12 - In Vision I Roamed by Thomas Hardy

13 - To Flowers from Italy by Thomas Hardy

14 - The Death of Nicou. An African Eclogue by Thomas Chatterton

15 - Bristol by Thomas Chatterton

16 - Apostate Will by Thomas Chatterton

17 - Dead Man's Dump by Isaac Rosenberg

18 - Daughters of War by Isaac Rosenberg

19 - Strange Hells by Ivor Gurney

20 - Poem for the End by Ivor Gurney

21 - The National Prayer, October 1840 by Henry Alford

22 - Sonnet XLIII. The Malvern Hills, March 12th 1835 by Henry Alford

23 - Life by Sir Walter Raleigh

24 - My Last Will by Sir Walter Raleigh

25 - Beauty, Time and Love by Samuel Daniel

26 - Sonnet II - Go Wailing Verse by Samuel Daniel

27 - The World's Age by Charles Kingsley

28 - 21st September 1870 by Charles Kingsley

29 - The Rao of Ilore by Laurence Hope aka Violet Nicholson

30 - The Bride by Laurence Hope aka Violet Nicholson

31 - Wishes To His Supposed Mistress by Sidney Godolphin

32 - No More Unto My Thoughts Appear  by Sidney Godolphin

33 - The Spacious Firmament by Joseph Addison

34 - Hope by Joseph Addison

35 - The Clock Striking Midnight by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

36 - The Last Man by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

37 - In Memoriam by Ewart Alan Mackintosh (Killed in Action 21st November 1917, Aged 24)

38 - To My Sister by Ewart Alan Mackintosh

39 - Back To Rest by Lieutenant William Noel Hodgson MC

40 - Before Action by Lieutenant William Noel Hodgson MC

41 - In A Soldier's Hospital. II - Gramaphone Tunes by Eva Dobell

42 - Advent, 1916 by Eva Dobell

43 - Morning by John Keble

44 - November by John Keble

45 - The Idlers Calender - April - Trout Fishing by William Scawen Blunt

46 - The Idlers Calendar. Twelve Sonnets for the Year - December by Wilfred Scawen Blunt

47 - Morning by Mary Darby Robinson

48 - Life by Mary Darby Robinson

49 - Taste by John Davies

50 - A Lover Out of Fashion by Sir John Davies

51 - To the Ladies by Lady Mary Chudleigh

52 - The Wish by Lady Mary Chudleigh

53 - No Platonic Love by William Cartwright

54 - Falsehood by William Cartwright

55 - To Susanna, February 1824 by Eliza Acton

56 - On the Death of Major Whitefoord, December 15th 1825 by Eliza Acton

57 - Ingratitude by Sir John Harrington

58 - Beauty by Sir John Harrington

59 - Let Mammon's Sons with Visage Lean by Mary Botham Howitt

60 - The Unregarded Toils of the Poor by Mary Botham Howitt

61 - The Mirror For Magistrates - The Induction by Thomas Sackville

62 - A True Account of the Birth and Conception of a Late Famous Poem by Charles Sackville, Earl Of Dorset 

63 - Shall We Not Love Thee Mother Dear by Henry Williams Baker

64 - Mother & Daughter (Extract) by Augusta Weber

65 - On the Works of Creation by Elizabeth Singer Rowe

66 - The Great Panjandrum by Samuel Foote

67 - Going Down Hill on a Bicycle, a Boy's Song by Henry Charles Beeching

68 - A Quiet Soul by John Oldham

69 - The Woman's Labour An Epistle to Mr Stephen Duck (Extract) by Mary Collier

70 - Slavery by John Bowring

71 - The Slave Trade. A Poem by Hannah More