The History of the Airplane / Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The History of the Airplane

And the Wright brothers said they thought they had invented
something that could make peace on earth when their wonderful
flying machine took off at Kitty Hawk into the kingdom of birds
but the parliament of birds was freaked out by this man-made bird
and fled to heaven

And then the famous Spirit of Saint Louis took off eastward and
flew across the Big Pond with Lindy at the controls in his leather
helmet and goggles hoping to sight the doves of peace but he did not
even though he circled Versailles

And then the famous Flying Clipper took off in the opposite
direction and flew across the terrific Pacific but the pacific doves
were frighted by this strange amphibious bird and hid in the orient sky

And then the famous Flying Fortress took off bristling with guns
and testosterone to make the world safe for peace and capitalism
but the birds of peace were nowhere to be found before or after Hiroshima

And so then clever men built bigger and faster flying machines and
these great man-made birds with jet plumage flew higher than any
real birds and seemed about to fly into the sun and melt their wings
and like Icarus crash to earth

And the Wright brothers were long forgotten in the high-flying
bombers that now began to visit their blessings on various Third
Worlds all the while claiming they were searching for doves of
peace

And they kept flying and flying until they flew right into the 21st
century and then one fine day a Third World struck back and
stormed the great planes and flew them straight into the beating
heart of Skyscraper America where there were no aviaries and no
parliaments of doves and in a blinding flash America became a part
of the scorched earth of the world

And a wind of ashes blows across the land
And for one long moment in eternity
There is chaos and despair

And buried loves and voices
Cries and whispers
Fill the air
Everywhere 

~~
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)
from Voices: Compassion Education, 2011

[Licensed under Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA 3.0 - some rights reserved]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti biography

"The History of the Airplane" read by Ferlinghetti. Courtesy Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Topic.

School / Winifred Welles

School

His seat was by a window. So he dreamed.
How could he study while the sunlight gleamed
In small, sweet shapes, like wild things tame enough
To dart to him and touch his hands for love?
While there were profiles carved in every cloud
To mark as grim or ludicrous or proud,
And agile shadowings to writhe and crawl
Like ghostly spiders up and down the wall,
He could not help but turn their way to look.
His eyes, that would not follow down his book
The muddy trudgings of deliberate words,
Reflected blue and silver flights of birds.
You would not think there was so much to trace
Of wonderment on just a window space.
But once, when a frail scrap of paper moon
Enchanted him from ten o'clock, till noon,
They moved him to the middle of the room.
He learned his lesson then for very gloom,
Until, came glowing to a nearby chair,
A little girl with sunset in her hair.
His soul recolored. The forlorn dreams came
To warm themselves once more at this new flame.
He pushed aside the dusty Greek. He had
A different way to read the Iliad.
While through cold ashes others groped to learn,
He lit the towers of Troy and saw them burn.

~~
Winifred Welles (1893-1939)
from The Hesitant Heart, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Winifred Welles biography

 "School" read by A stranger to a stranger.

The School Boy / William Blake

The School Boy

I love to rise in a summer morn, 
    When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
    And the skylark sings with me:
    O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,-
    O! It drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
    The little ones spend the day
    In sighing and dismay.

Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
    And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
    Nor sit in learning's bower,
    Worn through with dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
    Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
    But droop his tender wing,
    And forget his youthful spring!

O father and mother if buds are nipped,
    And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
    Of their joy in the springing day,
    By sorrow and care's dismay,-

How shall the summer arise in joy,
    Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
    Or bless the mellowing year,
    When the blasts of winter appear?

~~
William Blake (1757-1827)
from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 1794

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Blake biography

"The School Boy" read by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy Richard Mitchley - Topic.

Summer / Richard Chenevix Trench

Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803-1902), Heat Showers in August, 1857. Wikimedia Commons.

from The Seasons

Summer

Now seems all nature to conspire,
As to dissolve the world in fire,

Which dies among its odorous sweets,
A Phoenix on its funeral pyre.

Simoom breathes hotly from the waste,
The green earth quits its green attire;

Floats o'er the plain the liquid heat,
Cheating the traveller's fond desire —

Illusion fair of lake and stream,
Receding as he draweth nigher.

Ice is more precious now than gold,
Snow more than silver men desire.

'Tis far to seek unfailing wells
For tender maid or agèd sire;

Men know the worth of water now,
And learn to prize God's blessing higher;

The shallow pools have disappeared,
Caked into iron is the mire.

Through clouds of dust the crimson sun
Glares on the earth in lurid ire;

The parchèd earth with thirsty lips
Is gasping, ready to expire.

Oh happy, who by liquid streams
In shady gardens can retire,

Where murmuring falls and whispering trees
Sweet slumber to invite conspire;

Or where he may deceive the time
With volume sage, or pensive lyre.

~~

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1866)
from Poems from Eastern Sources, 1842

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Richard Chenevix Trench biography

"The Seasons" by Trench, read by Sonia for LibriVox. Courtesy Rhodoclassics.

("Summer" begins at 2:51.)

The Upstairs Room / Weldon Kees

The Upstairs Room

It must have been in March the rug wore through.
Now the day passes and I stare
At warped pine boards my father's father nailed,
At the twisted grain. Exposed, where emptiness allows,
Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations' shoes
Stumble and scrape and fall
To the floor my faher stained,
The new blood streaming from his head. The drift
Of autumn fires and a century's cigars, that gun's
Magnanimous and brutal smoke, endures.
In March the rug was ragged as the past. The thread
Rots like the lives we fasten on. Now it is August,
And the floor is blank, worn smooth,
And, for my life, imperishable.

~~
Weldon Kees (1914-1955)
from Poetry, August 1948

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Photo: Jonathan Haeber, Upstairs room. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Weldon Kees biography

"The Upstairs Room" courtesy PoemsBeingRead.

(Poem begins at 1:00)

The Mower to the Glow-Worms / Andrew Marvell

The Mower to the Glow-Worms

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate;

Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor prince’s funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grass’s fall;

Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame
To wand’ring mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;

Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.

~~
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
from Miscellaneous Poems, 1681

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Andrew Marvell biography

"The Mower to the Glow-Worms" read for Ming Aretê.

The Voice / Theodore Roethke

The Voice

One feather is a bird,
I claim; one tree, a wood;
In her low voice I heard
More than a mortal should;
And so I stood apart,
Hidden in my own heart.

And yet I roamed out where
Those notes went, like the bird,
Whose thin song hung in air,
Diminished, yet still heard:
I lived with open sound,
Aloft, and on the ground.

That ghost was my own choice,
The shy cerulean bird;
It sang with her true voice,
And it was I who heard
A slight voice reply;
I heard; and only I.

Desire exults the ear:
Bird, girl, and ghostly tree,
The earth, the solid air –
Their slow song sang in me;
The long noon pulsed away,
Like any summer day.

~~
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)
from Words for the Wind, 1957

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Theodore Roethke biography

"The Voice" read by Theodore Roethke. Courtesy Theodore Roethke - Topic.

(Poem begins at 1:40)

Summer Morn in New Hampshire / Claude McKay

 

Summer Morn in New Hampshire

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
    I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
    Upon the grass like running children’s feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
    Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
    And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.
But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
    The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
    The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
    But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
    And I was blind with hunger for your love.

~~
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
from Harlem Shadows, 1922

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada the United States, and the European Union]

Claude McKay biography

"Summer Morn in New Hampshire" read by Narad.

Courtesy The Mother & Sri Aurobindo: E-library.

To Helen [1848] / Edgar Allan Poe

To Helen

I saw thee once — once only — years ago:
I must not say how many — but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness and slumber,
Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe —
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death —
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half-reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn'd—alas, in sorrow!

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight —
Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow),
That bade me pause before that garden-gate,
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me—(O Heaven!— O God!
How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)—
Save only thee and me. I paused — I looked —
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses' odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All — all expired save thee — save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes —
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them — they were the world to me.
I saw but them — saw only them for hours —
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie unwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition! yet how deep —
How fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.
They would not go — they never yet have gone.
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.
They follow me — they lead me through the years.

They are my ministers — yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle —
My duty, to be saved by their bright light,
And purified in their electric fire,
And sanctified in their elysian fire.
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),
And are far up in Heaven — the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still — two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

~~
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), 1848
from Works, 1850

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edgar Allan Poe biography

"To Helen" read by Roy Macready.

Sketch / F.S. Flint

Sketch

Gold on her head, and in her heart's heart, gold!
She seems to breathe a rhododendron glow
Of blossoming colour, Fra Angelico
Would love to picture — angels aureoled!

An early Summer in her smiling glance,
The virginal sap and sweetness of her June,
And calm serenity of a crescent moon,
Weaving a glamour where the young leaves dance.

She has too something of unclouded skies
Of day and night about her, blue and dark
In turn, and deep. You see it if you mark
The limpid laughing purity of her eyes.

~~
F.S. Flint (1885-1960)
from In the Net of the Stars, 1909

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

F.S. Flint biography

"Sketch" read by Nemo. Courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

(Poem begins at 29:55)

In May / Madison Cawein

 

Rolf Dietrich Brecher, Spring, 2018.

CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

In May

When you and I in the hills went Maying,
     You and I in the bright May weather,
     The birds, that sang on the boughs together,
There in the green of the woods, kept saying
     All that my heart was saying low,
     ‘I love you! love you!’ soft and low,
          And did you know?
When you and I in the hills went Maying.

There where the brook on its rocks went winking,
     There by its banks where the May had led us,
     Flowers, that bloomed in the woods and meadows,
Azure and gold at our feet, kept thinking
     All that my soul was thinking there,
     ‘I love you! love you!’ softly there
          And did you care?
There where the brook on its rocks went winking.

Whatever befalls through fate’s compelling,
     Should our paths unite or our pathways sever,
     In the Mays to come I shall feel forever
The wildflowers thinking, the wild birds telling,
     In words as soft as the falling dew,
     The love that I keep here still for you,
          Both deep and true,
Whatever befalls through fate’s compelling.

~~
Madison Cawein (1865-1914)
from Myth and Romance, 1899

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Madison Cawein biography

"In May" read for Audiobook Passion.

Chanson D’Aventure / C.S. Lewis

Chanson D’Aventure

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear
‘This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

‘Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

‘This year time’s nature will no more defeat you,
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

‘This summer will not lead you round and back
To autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

‘Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
The gates of good adventure swing apart.

‘This time, this time, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.’

I said, ‘This might prove truer than a bird can know;
And yet your singing will not make it so.’

~~
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
from The Oxford Magazine, February 1938

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

C. S. Lewis biography

"What the Bird Said Early in the Year" read by Jo-Ann Dawson.

Courtesy St Mary Magdalene, Toronto - Anglican Church.

"What the Bird Said Early in the Year" is a later version of "Chanson d'Aventure," not published in Lewis's lifetime, that is inscribed on a memorial stone to Lewis on Addison's Walk at Magdalen College, Cambridge. The variations in the versions are discussed in "Carved in Stone: What the Bird Did Not Say Early in the Year" in The Lewis Legacy Issue 75 (Winter 1998).

To My Mother / Christina Rossetti

    To My Mother

Harrison Weir (1824-1906),

 Flowers for Mother,  ca. 1880.

 Wikimedia Commons. 

    
    To-day's your natal day;
            Sweet flowers I bring:
    Mother, accept, I pray
            My offering.

    And may you happy live,
            And long us bless;
    Receiving as you give
            Great happiness.

~~
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
from Poems for Children, 1907

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Christina Rossetti biography

"To My Mother" read for Eternal Poems.

God's Grandeur / Gerard Manley Hopkins

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

~~
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

 "God's Grandeur" read by Charles III. Courtesy The Royal Family..

Daffodils / William Wordsworth

Daffodils 

 I wander'd lonely as a cloud
    That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
    A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
    And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
    Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
    Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
    In such a jocund company:
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
    In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
    Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

~~
William Wordsworth (1770-1850), 1804
from The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900

(edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch), 1919

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Wordsworth biography

"Daffodils (I wander'd lonely as a cloud)" read for Inspired4Nature.

March / Annette Wynne

A.M. Mailick (1869-1946), Children running, 

circa 1908 (detail). Wikimedia Commons.

March

March is windy, March is wild,
Hurries like an eager child;
Puffing mouth and ruddy face,
Rushing in a windy race;
A breath or two he stops, and then
He's puffing madly off again.

March is windy, March is wild,
A rushing, blowing, puffing child.
And why does March go rushing so?
He's trying to catch spring, you know.

~~
Annette Wynne (1889-1952)

from For Days and Days: A year-round treasury of child verse, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and  the European Union]

[April]

Annette Wynne biography

"March" text, summary, and analysis. Courtesy iswearenglish.com.

March / Hart Crane

March

Hart Crane. The Great Whatsit.

Awake to the cold light
of wet wind running
twigs in tremors. Walls
are naked. Twilights raw —
and when the sun taps steeples
their glistenings dwindle
upward . . .

                    March
slips along the ground
like a mouse under pussy
willows, a little hungry.

The vagrant ghost of winter,
is it this that keeps the chimney
busy still? For something
still nudges shingles and windows:

but waveringly,— this ghost,
this slate-eyed saintly wraith
of winter wanes
and knows its waning.

~~ 

Hart Crane (1899-1932) 

from Collected Poems, 1933

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]

Hart Crane biography

"March" read by Thomas D.

A Valentine / Lewis Carroll

A Valentine

    [Sent to a friend who had complained that I was glad enough to see
    him when he came, but didn’t seem to miss him if he stayed away.]

And cannot pleasures, while they last,
Be actual unless, when past,
They leave us shuddering and aghast,
        With anguish smarting?
And cannot friends be firm and fast,
        And yet bear parting?

And must I then, at Friendship’s call,
Calmly resign the little all
(Trifling, I grant, it is and small)
        I have of gladness,
And lend my being to the thrall
        Of gloom and sadness?

And think you that I should be dumb,
And full dolorum omnium,
Excepting when you choose to come
        And share my dinner?
At other times be sour and glum
        And daily thinner?

Must he then only live to weep,
Who’d prove his friendship true and deep
By day a lonely shadow creep,
        At night-time languish,
Oft raising in his broken sleep
        The moan of anguish?

The lover, if for certain days
His fair one be denied his gaze,
Sinks not in grief and wild amaze,
        But, wiser wooer,
He spends the time in writing lays,
        And posts them to her.

And if the verse flow free and fast,
Till even the poet is aghast,
A touching Valentine at last
        The post shall carry,
When thirteen days are gone and past
        Of February.

Farewell, dear friend, and when we meet,
In desert waste or crowded street,
Perhaps before this week shall fleet,
        Perhaps to-morrow,
I trust to find your heart the seat
        Of wasting sorrow.

~~
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), 1860
from Phantasmagoria, and other poems, 1869

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Lewis Carroll biography

"A Valentine" read for LibriVox.org. Courtesy Audiobooks Hub.

A January Night / Thomas Hardy

A January Night
         (1879)

The rain smites more and more,
The east wind snarls and sneezes;
Through the joints of the quivering door
        The water wheezes.

The tip of each ivy-shoot
Writhes on its neighbour's face;
There is some hid dread afoot
        That we cannot trace.

Is it the spirit astray
Of the man at the house below
Whose coffin they took in to-day?
        We do not know.

~~
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
from Moments of Vision, 1917

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Thomas Hardy biography

"A January Night" read by Jean Aked. Courtesy jeanakedpoetry.

Mild is the Parting Year / Walter Savage Landor

Chris Downer, New Year's Eve stroll, 2005. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

from Ianthe

XXXI

Mild is the parting year, and sweet
    The odour of the falling spray;
Life passes on more rudely fleet,
    And balmless is its closing day.

I wait its close, I court its gloom,
    But mourn that never must there fall
Or on my breast or on my tomb
    The tear that would have soothed it all.

~~
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
from Gebir, Count Julian, and other poems, 1831

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Walter Savage Landor biography

"Mild is the Parting Yerr" read for Audiobook Passion.