Classic Poetry

Israel Zangwill was born in London on 21st January 1864, to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His writing earned him the sobriquet ‘the Dickens of the Ghetto’ primarily based on his much-lauded novel Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People in 1892 and its glimpse of the poverty-stricken life in London's Jewish quarter.

With classics such as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ Robert Browning’s status as one of the great Victorian poets will always be secure in popular culture, while for the more literary he is considered a master of dramatic verse and dramatic monologues. It is interesting to note that his career bloomed late. Indeed, it was only after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1861 and his return to England from their life in Italy that his work came into wider acceptance and critical acclaim. 

It is often said that two things are unavoidable: death and taxes. Certainly the latter is a common thorn in adult life, but as to the former it seems that for many people it is merely a hiccup in life’s journey. A journey they wish, if being of good deed and character, to share at the eternity of heaven’s largesse, a reward for faith and the obligations of religion. Of course for those not so fortunate an altogether different experience was prepared for them: hell. Its nightmare visions are so terrifying, conjured up by Dante, Milton, Blake, Baudelaire and many others.

It is often said that two things are unavoidable: death and taxes.Certainly the latter is a common thorn in adult life, but as to the former it seems that for many people it is merely a hiccup in life’s eternal journey. A journey they wish, if being of good deed and character, to share at the eternity of heaven’s largesse, a reward for faith and the obligations of religion. Of course for those not so fortunate an altogether different experience was prepared for them: hell.

William Wordsworth was born on the 7th of April, 1770 and is rightly regarded as a major English poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature. His words have been proffered by many a tongue around the world. They stir, they inspire they create lyrical pictures and feelings as few others can. Wordsworth's was also Britain's Poet Laureate from his appointment by Queen Victoria in 1843 until his death in on the 23rd of April 1850.

This anthology of thirty-five children's poems was first published in 1927. It is the second collection by Milne of children's poetry, following When We Were Very Young, which was released in 1924. Now We Are Six is notable for the appearance of the lovable bear, Winnie the Pooh who is featured in several poems and whose adventures are described in the Winnie The Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.

Caliban is a major character in The Tempest by Shakespeare. He is a deformed monster, the offspring of Sycrorax, a witch. Prospero, a magician who presides over the island where Caliban dwells, has made him a servant. This galls Caliban's spirit, as he believes himself to be the rightful ruler of the island. Setebos is the deity who was worshipped by Sycorax and is mentioned by Caliban in two scenes.

Paradise (Paradiso) is the third canticle of Dante Alighieri's world-renowned narrative poem describing the poet's journey through the realms of the afterlife. Here Dante is guided by his beloved Beatrice through the nine celestial regions of Paradise, leading to the last, Empyrean Heaven, the dwelling place of God and the angels.

In the war a great volume of poetry was written, produced and published in books, periodicals, newspapers or letters back to home. We often think of war as a necessity. We fight for a more just and better world. We often fail. But in our poets we gain a truth and a morality that shocks us, consoles us and holds our values to the light. In this volume we hear poems from the front, from home, from soldiers, from auxiliaries, from friend and from foe.

Here are the favorites from Lewis Carroll, Jonathan Swift, William Shakespeare, and more. And that is not to forget perhaps the greatest of them all: Anon. There are ballads, sonnets, proverbs, and nonsense verse. Poems to inform, divert, satirize, castigate and praise. A collection to make all listeners smile, laugh, remember and discover.

This beloved nursery rhyme tells a story that is both a bit scary (she lost her sheep!) and funny (they lost their tails!). The poor tiny girl, trying to do a job that is quite hard for her with her short legs, becomes bewildered. But help is there in the shape of an old lady who plays a trick on her, telling her that her sheep have lost their tails which she must find and somehow put them back on. Will the distraught little BoPeep find the missing tails? And if she does will she be able to re-attach them? Listen and learn!

Old King Cole was not always a king, nor was he born a member of any royal family. It was only chance that made him a king at all. He had always been a poor man, being the son of an apple peddler, who had died and left him nothing but a donkey and a fiddle. But that was enough for Cole, who never bothered his head about the world's goods, but took things as they came and refused to worry about anything. So begins the story of how this happy soul became the king of a country by accident.

That wonderful storyteller Baum, of Wizard of Oz fame, tells us the delightful story behind this little rhyme and we all will feel much better knowing that the little boy had excellent reasons to be asleep that morning. Listen and enjoy the whole nifty story. Many of our most loved nursery rhymes are complete tales in themselves, telling their story tersely but completely; others are but bare suggestions, leaving the imagination to weave in the details of the story.

The Man in the Moon was rather lonesome, and often he peeked over the edge of the moon and looked down upon the earth and envied all the people who lived together. He thought it must be vastly more pleasant to have companions to talk to than to be shut up on a big planet all by himself.

Gilligren was an orphan and lived with an uncle and aunt who were very unkind to him. They cuffed him and scolded him upon the slightest provocation, and made his life very miserable indeed. Gilligren never rebelled against this treatment, but bore their cruelty silently and with patience, although often he longed to leave them and seek a home amongst kinder people.

These poems by celebrated women authors inspired the narrator and will inspire you! Enjoy the musical connections, the bonus poem that resonates with one of the holiday classics, and a poem improvised by the narrator, who is an award-winning poet. 

The final volume of this collection features the work of 20 poets who were active just after the First World War.

First published in the Bulletin in the nineties, Paterson's verse has enjoyed enduring success throughout Australian literary history. Paterson had an intimate knowledge of life in the outback: he knew bushmen and he knew horses. His boundary riders and shearers, his buckjumpers and station hands, are real characters—the first realistic portraits of Australians in the bush at work and play to appear in verse. Many of the characters he created have so imprinted themselves on the public imagination that they have become part of Australian folklore.

Sappho is widely recognized as one of the great poets of world literature, an author whose works have caused her readers to repeat in many different forms Strabo's amazed epithet when he wrote that she could only be called "a marvel." The reception of Sappho's poetry even through the twentieth century offers a case study of the conflicts induced by the sexual preferences she seemingly alludes to in her verse. Little is known with certainty about the life of Sappho, or Psappha in her native Aeolic dialect. She was born probably about 620 B.C. to an aristocratic family on the island of Lesbos during a great cultural flowering in the area.

Toda la obra de Federico García Lorca está rodeada de misterio, toda vez que las balas asesinas de Franco le arrebataron la vida. Y aún más aquellas partes de su obra que podemos considerar inacabadas. Es el caso de Sonetos del amor oscuro, el único texto conocido en el que el poeta habla abiertamente del amor entre dos hombres. Once composiciones de una belleza inigualable, escritas durante el último año de su vida, que no sabemos si iban a formar parte de un determinado conjunto o de qué forma Lorca las había concebido.