Showing results by narrator "Denis Daly" in All Categories

A prominent focus of the works of New Thought author Christian Larson (1874-1954) was the cultivation of positive mental states for the attainment of success and happiness. In this short treatise, he analyzes some common mental maladies and gives suggestions for their treatment.

James Elroy Flecker, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, and diplomat, like his illustrious poetic peers, Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, did not survive the First World War. All three died young: Owen and Brooke in the line of battle, and Flecker, who never fought due to a long-standing respiratory illness, in a sanatorium in Switzerland in 1915. Flecker's poems are generally short: none of his original verse works exceeds 1200 words in length. Flecker revised his poems regularly, refining their spare but telling verbiage and achieving simplicity and directness.

Among his many other attributes, James Elroy Flecker was a skilled linguist and an expert translator of Latin poetry. In 1913, he planned to write a book to be entitled An interpretation in blank verse of Virgil, Aeneid VI, based on the poetic value of the sounds, together with Latin text and ten prefaces. The surviving translation consists of lines 1-19 and 264-547 from book six, which describe Aeneas' encounter with Sibyl and his visit to the underworld.

A resourceful miner devises an ingenious scheme to expedite his fishing, but it does not quite go as planned.

Much of Tennyson's poetry is elegiac in nature, featuring characters who have been disempowered by isolation, age, or lack of opportunity. One of the most famous examples of this is the dramatic soliloquy, "Ulysses". "Columbus", written many years later, is also a dramatic narrative. In both cases, the narrators are elderly mariners, who have a long history of daring forays into remote regions, and who are eager to venture forth again but are hampered by lack of opportunity and the effects of aging.

Amongst all the figures in the history of Western art forms, Beethoven is one of the most radical and influential. Not only did he produce some of the most celebrated and recognizable music of all time, but his influence dramatically accelerated the development of musical composition. He was instrumental in raising the status of the composer from that of a court servant to one of an independent artist.

William Wordsworth belonged to a chosen band of poets for whom poetry was a priesthood, displayed in his unerring devotion to his art. He nourished his unique poetic gift by daily intimacy with Nature. It is Wordworth’s peculiar achievement to reveal the impulses at work behind the outward beauty of Nature, and to manifest its sustaining influence upon the spirit of man.

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.

This self-help treatise by prominent New Thought author Christian D. Larson explores the accumulation and preservation of personal power, an essential ingredient in success. Larson defines this management of power as poise, an attitude that prevents the unnecessary loss of vital force. The title page bears the following epigraph: "A genius is slumbering in the subconscious of every mind. This genius can be awakened."

Asoka, who reigned from 268 to 232 BC, was the most famous emperor of the Maurya Dynasty, which was the ruling clan of the Indian subcontinent from 321 BC to 185 BC. He was one of the most famous early converts to Buddhism and became one of its greatest evangelists. Today Asoka has a twofold interest for us: political and religious. The illustrious member of the great dynasty, of which he was the most celebrated representative, has left indelible traces of its achievements in Indian history. Moreover, he was the leader of a spiritual movement that spread rapidly throughout the East.

This pacifist manifesto was published in 1917, as the First World War was dragging to a close. The resolution of this catastrophic conflict resulted in a reconstruction of Europe, the fallout from which led to an even more cataclysmic war. Russell delineates the problem as being due to the institutionalizing of national hostilities and the consequent apportioning of blame among the warring parties. In his exposition Russell considers the roles played by a number of institutions, social and political, reserving some his sharpest criticism for organized religion.

Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen’s first novels, though it was not published until after her death, and contains some of her most biting satire. Catherine Morland, the novel’s naive and provincial heroine, has formed her idea of the world from Gothic novels, full of gloomy Italian castles, long-kept secrets, and dastardly villains. However, when she travels to the city of Bath and encounters a wider society, she will discover that all her reading has ill-prepared her for the real world.

Listeners are invited to sit back and enjoy this collection of classic Yuletide tales....

Rosmersholm is a play surrounding the deep and intense political and cultural change in Norway in the middle of the 1880s, a period during which the traditional ruling class were forced to relinquish their right to impose their ideals on the rest of society. We follow Johannes Rosmer, a pastor who has resigned from his position; Rebecca West, a woman who sees Rosmer's potential and believes she can help him to realize his dream of creating a world of "happy, noble people"; and Headmaster Kroll, Rosmer's former best friend.

This collection contains several of Tennyson’s best-known poems and shows his mastery of both lyricism and epic narrative.

Andrea Del Sarto (1836 - 1530) was a Florentine painter whose career flourished during the High Renaissance. In this dramatic monologue, "the faultless painter" (Andrea Senza Errori, as he was surnamed by the Italians) is the speaker. He addresses his unsympathetic wife, Lucrezia, upon whom he dotes, and for whom he has broken faith with his royal patron, Francis I of France so that he can meet the expenses of her indulgent lifestyle. He laments that he has not realized the possibilities of his genius, partly blaming and partly excusing the woman who has failed to support his high ideals.

In the early twentieth century, it was often said that “Australia rides on the sheep’s back”—a reflection of the nation’s dependence on the wool trade. Accordingly, a vast itinerant army of labourers was required to shear the sheep and prepare fleeces for market. In this essay, Rolf Boldrewood provides a vivid picture of the shearing season on a large property.

Wells had a keen interest in the political and social issues of his day, one of the most significant of which was the outbreak of the First World War. This book, written in 1916, presents the story of Mr Britling, a political commentator, living in comfortable security in his country estate at Matchings Easy, in Essex. He entertains a varied assembly of guests, including Mr Direck, an American journalist, and Herr Heinrich, a German philology student who acts as a family tutor, and the general atmosphere is a hectic social whirl.

Epithalamion is an ode included in an anthology, Amoretti, first published in 1595. Spenser's purpose was to celebrate his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle whose marriage with him is glorified in the Epithalamion.

This enigmatic poem is attributed to Seng-t'san, the third Chinese patriarch of Zen, who died in 606 CE. The tone of the work is revealed in the opening stanza in which the patriarch recommends dynamic introspection as the ideal attitude in solving the apparent problems of life. He urges the seeker neither to become trapped in the "outer entanglements of life" nor to isolate himself in solitude, but to remain calm in the procession of personal vicissitudes, seeing the essential oneness of all things.