Phillis Wheatley was the first African-American to publish a book of poetry in 1773. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at age seven, and bought by a wealthy Massachusetts family who taught her to read and write. Her extraordinary literary gifts led to the publication of her "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," and to her eventual emancipation by her owners. Although some of the poems demonstrate an apparent acceptance of the racist values of the white slave-owning classes (which viewed Africans as savage), Wheatley's considerable talents simultaneously contradicted these stereotypes.

This is a collection of poems by James Elroy Flecker.

This charming little book compiles together a number of recipes, set out in an easy to understand manner, along with a poetic story about the stages of bread production. This book was produced as a promotional for a flour production company called Pillsbury. This is a "modern" update compared to the original edition of the book. This version has exact oven temperature settings for each recipe included in a preface for the book, along with more precise suggestions for the baking time. The book has been written for children, however I am certain that adults could enjoy the book equally as much as a child would.

Mark Lemon had a natural talent for journalism and the stage, and, at twenty-six, retired from less congenial business to devote himself to the writing of plays. More than sixty of his melodramas, operettas and comedies were produced in London, whilst at the same time he was contributing to a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, and was founding editor of both Punch and The Field.

Sarojini Naidu was a remarkable woman. Known as the Nightingale of India, she started writing at the age of thirteen and throughout her life composed several volumes of poetry, writing many poems which are still famous to this day. As well as being a poet, Naidu was an activist and politician, campaigning for Indian independence and became the first Indian woman to attain the post of President of the Indian National Congress. This volume contains the beautiful 'Indian Love-Song', as well as many other moving verses...

The memoirs of Frances Ridley Havergal, a great missionary and hymn writer.

A collection of poems by Frances Ridley Havergal and others, all describing different aspects of our walk with God, from 'Coming to the King' to 'Under the Shadow.'

Sidney Clopton Lanier was an American musician, poet and author. He served in the Confederate army, worked on a blockade running ship for which he was imprisoned (resulting in his catching tuberculosis), taught, worked at a hotel where he gave musical performances, was a church organist, and worked as a lawyer. As a poet he used dialects. He became a flautist and sold poems to publications. He eventually became a university professor and is known for his adaptation of musical meter to poetry. Many schools, other structures and two lakes are named for him.

LibriVox volunteers bring you 9 recordings of My Springs by Sidney Lanier. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for April 7th, 2013. This rather lovely poem is the poet's tribute to his wife's eyes.

There were scarcely any events in the life of Thomas Hood. One condition there was of too potent determining importance—life-long ill health; and one circumstance of moment—a commercial failure, and consequent expatriation. Beyond this, little presents itself for record in the outward facts of this upright and beneficial career, bright with genius and coruscating with wit, dark with the lengthening and deepening shadow of death.

Adela Florence Nicolson was an English poet who wrote under the pseudonym Laurence Hope. She was born in England and joined her father in 1881, who was employed in the British Army at Lahore (The traditional capital of Punjab for a millennium, Lahore was the cultural centre of the northern Indian subcontinent which extends from the eastern banks of the Indus River to New Delhi.) Her father was editor of the Lahore arm of The Civil and Military Gazette, and it was he who in all probability gave Rudyard Kipling (a contemporary of his daughter) his first employment as a journalist...

Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist. She worked prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. She became unhealthy, possibly due to her charity work, and died of tuberculosis at the age of 38. Procter's literary career began when she was a teenager; her poems were primarily published in Charles Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round and later published in book form. Her charity work and her conversion to Roman Catholicism appear to have strongly influenced her poetry, which deals most commonly with such subjects as homelessness, poverty, and fallen women...

Adam Lindsay Gordon was an Australian poet, jockey and politician.

LibriVox volunteers bring you 12 recordings of The Flag and the Faithful by William J. Lampton. This was the Weekly Poetry project for January 20, 2013.William J. Lampton was the second cousin of Jane Clemens (the youngest of the three daughters of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain.)He launched his jounalist carreer in 1877 by starting the Ashland (Kentucky) Weekly Review, with his father’s money. Lampton wrote several book, as well as humorous poems he called 'yawps'. These were printed in the New York Sun and published in Yawps and Other Things ca. 1900.

This is a collection of poems about Charleston and the South Carolina Lowcountry. DuBose Heyward was a Charleston native best known for his novel Porgy, which was the basis for the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess. Hervey Allen, who later wrote Anthony Adverse, met Heyward after moving to Charleston to teach. Together they founded the Poetry Society of South Carolina, which is still active today.

A collection, The Culprit Fay and Other Poems, was published posthumously by his daughter in 1835. His best-known poems are the long title-poem of that collection and the patriotic "The American Flag" which was set as a cantata for two soloists, choir and orchestra by the Czech composer Antonin Dvořák in 1892-93, as his Op. 102. In the early part of the 19th Century both Drake and his friend Halleck were widely hailed by Americans as among the leading literary personalities and talents produced by this country...

"The Fall of the Nibelungs" is Margaret Armour's plain prose translation from the middle high German of the "Nibelungenlied", a poetic saga of uncertain authorship written about the year 1200. The story is believed by many to be based on the destruction of the Burgundians, a Germanic tribe, in 436 by mercenary Huns recruited for the task by the Roman general Flavius Aëtius. The introduction to the 1908 edition summarizes the story, "And so 'the discord of two women,' to quote Carlyle, 'is as a little...

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping — rapping at my chamber door. "Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this and nothing more."". Those sonorous and somber words of Edgar Allan Poe that begin The Raven are part of most everyone's fond educational memories. Beautiful and haunting to hear and even more fun to read aloud...

LibriVox volunteers bring you 14 recordings of An Afternoon in July by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for July 7, 2013.Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon, born Rosanna Eleanor Mullins, was a Canadian writer and poet. She was "one of the first English-Canadian writers to depict French Canada in a way that earned the praise of, and resulted in her novels being read by, both anglophone and francophone Canadians."Leprohon's novels were popular in both English and French Canada in the late 19th-century, and were still being reprinted in French in the mid-1920s...

This volume contains stories, poems, myths, and facts about lots of different birds, intended for teaching children. It is divided into nine parts, each covering a different type of bird.

LibriVox volunteers bring you 15 recordings of To The Gnat by Samuel Rogers. This was the Weekly Poetry project for May 19, 2013.Some comments from our readers.. "It might seem a tad mellow dramatic, but if you live in the country as I do, this might just resonate. Here it is the mosquito that presents as my mortal enemy, and if it infiltrates my room at night, there is no sleeping until it has been vanquished. (Arielph)"Coming from Scotland as I do where we have the dreaded Midgie, which feels like it has the teeth of a Doberman, I can sympathize with the poet on his anticipation of a sleepless night...

William Vaughn Moody was an American dramatist and poet. Author of The Great Divide, first presented under the title of The Sabine Woman at the Garrick Theatre in Chicago on April 12, 1906. Moody's poetic dramas included The Masque of Judgment (1900), The Fire Bringer (1904), and The Death of Eve (left undone at his death). He taught English at Harvard and Radcliffe until 1895, when he went to Chicago where he was an instructor at the University of Chicago, and from 1901 to 1907 assistant professor of English and rhetoric.

Edward Woodley Bowling was apparently a rector at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Conquest, Bedfordshire, England in the late 1800's, this poem is taken from Sagittulae, Random Verses. In this book's introduction he writes "The general reader will probably think that some apology is due to him from me for publishing verses of so crude and trivial a character. I can only say that the smallest of bows should sometimes be unstrung, and that if my little arrows are flimsy and light they will, I trust, wound no one."

Jean McKishnie Blewett (4 November 1862 – 19 August 1934) was a Canadian journalist, author and poet. Blewett was a regular contributor to The Globe, a Toronto newspaper and in 1898 became editor of its Homemakers Department. In 1919, assisted by the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, she published a booklet titled Heart Stories to benefit war charities. During this time she regularly lectured on topics such as temperance and suffragism. She used the pseudonym Katherine Kent for some of her writing...

LibriVox volunteers bring you 13 recordings of Lines Addressed to an Old Bachelor by James McIntyre. This was the Weekly Poetry project for January 27, 2013.Another poem from Canada's cheese poet, James McIntyre.

This collection recognizes Black History Month, February 2007. Two excellent resources for public domain African American writing are African American Writers (Bookshelf) and The Book of American Negro Poetry, edited by James Weldon Johnson. Johnson’s collection inspired the Harlem Renaissance generation to establish a firm African-American literary tradition in the United States.

A collection of classic Christian hymns spanning the centuries. Some of the hymns are read; others are sung.

The Cathay poems appeared in a slim volume in 1915. They are, in effect, Ezra Pound’s English translations/ interpretations from notebooks written by the Japanese scholar Ernest Fenollosa. Pound, not knowing any Chinese or Japanese at all, promptly created a new and somewhat complex style of translation, as he had done with words from several other languages. The Cathay poems are primarily written by the Chinese poet Li Po, refered to throughout these translations as Rihaku, the Japanese form of his name...

First collection of sung and spoken folk ballads (13 in collection).

A heartwarming collection of nursery rhymes that will take you back to your childhood!

In this saga, the events that led to Eirik the Red’s banishment to Greenland are chronicled, as well as Leif Eirikson’s discovery of Vinland the Good (a place where wheat and grapes grew naturally), after his longboat was blown off-course. By geographical details, this place is surmised to be present-day Newfoundland, and is likely the first European discovery of the American mainland, some five centuries before Christopher Columbus’s journey.

In honor of Kristin and Corey’s wedding (April 2006) we’ve recorded a selection of wedding-themed poems. Congratulations, you two!

A selection of twenty hymns sung in this recording.

This is a sequel of sorts to 37 American Poems, one of my first solos. Concentration here is on late 19th to early 20th Century works by US poets.

In this celebration of diversity, learn about the myriad histories and cultures behind our volunteers.

The poems and stories in this collection were selected with the reader’s grandchildren in mind. “The Raggedy Man” and “Little Orphant Annie,” both by James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier Poet were favorites of the reader when she was a child on a farm in Indiana. Other favorites were picked up along the way as she read to her own daughter and to her students, while other gems were discovered while looking for poems and stories to include in this collection. It is hoped that this collection will bless the hearts of many children and parents alike as they listen together.

Ten early Public Domain poems by some of the authors mention of whose most popular works is most likely to come in close proximity to the word “sorry” in the LV forums. Included are: JRR Tolkien, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Dorothy L Sayers, CS Lewis, William Faulkner, Kahlil Gibran, DH Lawrence, Robert Graves and Ernest Hemingway.

A collection of 48 prose and poetry selections written principally in the 18th Century. These works of world literature are written in the English language or are in English translation.

The Song of Roland is an epic poem, originally sung in Old French. It tells the story of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778. This is an English translation. Translated by Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff.

A collection of children’s alphabet rhymes including Footsteps On the Road to Learning – a short text from 1850 which teaches children the English alphabet in rime–so that a child may not become a dunce! The Anti Slavery Alphabet – a book prepared to encourage young children to speak against the institution of slavery in 19th century United States. The method used is an alphabetical listing of the evils of slavery. The Peter Pan Alphabet and The Alphabet of Celebrities – Oliver Herford’s teaching guides to the English alphabet–using Peter Pan and famous names!

This is a collection of short poems and readings, both religious and secular, on death and bereavement.

The Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, is a work of enormous proportions. Setting out with the simple goal of offering "American households a mass of good reading", the editors drew from literature of all times and all kinds what they considered the best pieces of human writing, and compiled an ambitious collection of 45 volumes (with a 46th being an index-guide). Besides the selection and translation of a huge number of poems, letters, short stories and sections of books, the collection offers, before each chapter, a short essay about the author or subject in question...

Robert Burns, the national bard (poet) of Scotland was born on the 25th January, 1759. This is a collection of his poems and songs. This collection also includes works from other poets and writers who have written about Burns.

One of the Pseudepigrapha, the Psalms of Solomon is a group of eighteen psalms (religious songs or poems) that are not part of any scriptural canon (they are, however, found in copies of the Peshitta). The Psalms of Solomon were referenced in Early Christian writings, but lost to modern scholars until a Greek manuscript was rediscovered in the 17th century. Politically, the Psalms of Solomon are anti-Maccabee, and some psalms in the collection show a clear awareness of the Roman conquest of Jerusalem under Pompey in 63 BCE, metaphorically treating him as a dragon who had been sent by God to punish the Maccabees...

“The Keepsake, or, Poems and Pictures For Childhood and Youth”, is a collection of twenty pastoral poems published as one collection in London, 1818. The topics are moral encouragement for children, young and old alike.

As we get older, many of us return to youthful memories of poems once significant to us. Outside their association with our youth, we may wonder what significance they have to us now. There were other poems we’ve met along the way as well: some held no appeal while others were forgotten. And there were others we never had the opportunity to meet.This selection hopes to go beyond the experience of meeting old friends and on top opening the door to new ones —poems that might relate more significantly to our current lives...

Some wonderful poems by Christopher Marlowe and others recorded ‘on location’ – in the churchyard of St Nicholas’, Deptford, and the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.

As we get older, many of us return to youthful memories of poems once significant to us. Outside their association with our youth, we may wonder what significance they have to us now. There were other poems we’ve met along the way as well: some held no appeal while others were forgotten. And there were others we never had the opportunity to meet. This selection hopes to go beyond the experience of meeting old friends and on top opening the door to new ones — poems that might relate more significantly to our current lives...

A collection of Australian writing from the public domain.

The Charles Dickens 200th Anniversary Collection comprises short works - fiction, essays, poetry, letters, magazine articles and speeches - and each volume will be a pot pourri of all genres and periods of his writing. This first volume is released on Dickens' 200th birthday, February 7th 2012. Further volumes will follow during the anniversary year.Volume 1 includes short stories including, amongst others, The Holly Tree, the first part of Holiday Romance and three pieces from Mugby Junction.Some...

Some day an enterprising editor may find time to glean from the whole field of Canadian literature a representative collection of wit and humour. . . . The present little collection obviously makes no such ambitious claim. It embraces, however, what are believed to be representative examples of the work of some of our better-known writers, many of which will no doubt be quite familiar to Canadian readers, but perhaps none the less welcome on that account.

A collection of poetry selected and performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode. Rhapsodes of Ancient Greece were “song-stitchers,” performing selections from the epics of Homer and Hesiod. The contemporary rhapsode performs the classical poetry of his or her language, culture, and tradition. Any particular collection and arrangement of poems for performance I term a “rhapsody.” In general terms, a rhapsody is an ecstatic expression of feeling and enthusiasm. In music, a rhapsody is an instrumental composition irregular in form and suggestive of improvisation...

The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany in May 1712 in two cantos (334 lines), but then revised, expanded and reissued under Pope's name on March 2, 1714, in a much-expanded 5-canto version (794 lines). The final form was available in 1717 with the addition of Clarissa's speech on good humour. The poem satirizes a petty squabble by comparing it to the epic world of the gods. It was based on an incident recounted by Pope's friend, John Caryll...

James Allen was a British philosophical writer known for his inspirational books and poetry and as a pioneer of the self-help movement.In the introduction Lily Allen writes: "It cannot be said of this book that James Allen wrote it at any particular time or in any one year, for he was engaged in it over many years and those who have eyes to see and hearts to understand will find in its pages the spiritual history of his life. It was his own wish that The Divine Companion should be the last manuscript of his to be published. 'It is the story of my soul,' he said, 'and should be read last of all my books, so that the student may understand and find my message in its pages.'"

The Rape of Lucrece (1594) is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Lucretia. Lucrece draws on the story described in both Ovid's Fasti and Livy's history of Rome. In 509 BC, Sextus Tarquinius, son of Tarquin, the king of Rome, raped Lucretia (Lucrece), wife of Collatinus, one of the king's aristocratic retainers. As a result, Lucrece committed suicide. Her body was paraded in the Roman Forum by the king's nephew. This incited a full-scale revolt against the Tarquins led by Lucius Junius Brutus, the banishment of the royal family, and the founding of the Roman republic.

From the Preface of The Speaking Voice: principles of training simplified and condensed: "This book offers a method of voice training which is the result of a deliberate effort to simplify and condense, for general use, the principles which are fundamental to all recognized systems of vocal instruction. It contains practical directions accompanied by simple and fundamental exercises, first for the freeing of the voice and then for developing it when free."Parts I and II of the book comprise advice...

Venus and Adonis is Shakespeare's narrative poem about the love of the goddess Venus for the mortal youth Adonis, dedicated partly to his patron, the Earl of Southampton (thought by some to be the beautiful youth to which many of the Sonnets are addressed). The poem recounts Venus' attempts to woo Adonis, their passionate coupling, and Adonis' rejection of the goddess, to which she responds with jealousy, with tragic results. This recording features three different readers performing the narration, Venus, and Adonis.

"Originally modeled on the Psalms and other poetic passages (commonly referred to as "canticles") in the Scriptures, Christian hymns are generally directed as praise and worship to the monotheistic God. Many refer to Jesus Christ either directly or indirectly. Since the earliest times, Christians have sung "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs", both in private devotions and in corporate worship (Matthew 26:30; 1 Cor 14:26; Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16; James 5:13; cf. Revelation 5:8-10; Revelation 14:1-5)...

Go through the year, day by day, with the wit and wisdom of G.K. Chesterton! Compiled from the writings of 'G.K.C', both in verse and in prose, each day of the year is provided with a generally short quotation from one of his many works. Also includes a section apart for the moveable feasts.

The Excursion: Being a portion of The Recluse, a Poem is a long poem by Romantic poet William Wordsworth and was first published in 1814. It was intended to be the second part of The Recluse, an unfinished larger work that was also meant to include The Prelude, Wordsworth's other long poem, which was eventually published posthumously. The exact dates of its composition are unknown, but the first manuscript is generally dated as either September 1806 or December 1809. (Introduction by Wikipedia)