Showing results by author "Evan Blackmore" in All Categories

Robert Browning was fascinated by people—not only people of his own day, but also people who had lived in the remote past. Five of his famous dramatic monologues are spoken by characters from the ancient Classical world: a Greek goddess (Artemis), a Roman senator (in “Imperante Augusto Natus Est—”), an Arab physician (Karshish), a Greek poet (Cleon), and the last surviving eyewitness of Jesus Christ (in “A Death in the Desert”). They probe many different questions, especially regarding the transition from paganism to Christianity.

This collection of classic poems of compassion and consolation on various subjects ranges from Wordsworth’s own bereavements to hardships faced by people in other times and other places.

In 1892, Alfred Tennyson, the official Poet Laureate of Great Britain, died. According to custom, a new Laureate now had to be chosen by the Prime Minister. But on this occasion, uniquely, there was a problem. Many different candidates for the position were suggested, but for several years, none were chosen. In this recording, we listen to selected poems by Tennyson himself and by ten writers nominated to succeed him.

Here are two of the very earliest surviving Robin Hood stories: Robin Hood and the Potter and Robin Hood and the Knight, both dating from the end of the Middle Ages. Here are Robin Hood, Little John, and the Sheriff of Nottingham, as they were described in the days when knights and monks and potters and outlaws really did go riding, at least occasionally, through the forests of England.

This collection contains 201 lively little poems by the most playful of English Golden Age writers, Robert Herrick.

Alexander Pope was the most influential and most admired writer of his time, famous for satirical and reflective poems such as The Rape of the Lock and the Essay on Man. His lyrical poems are tantalizingly few in number but predictably high in quality, with all the beauty of sound and incisiveness of sense familiar from his other works.