 Closing words of Dr. Faustus. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Graham Redman in the churchyard of St. Nicholas in Depford on Sunday the 18th of May 2008. Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. The closing words. Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight. And Burned is Apollo's laurel bow that sometime grew within this learned man. Faustus is gone. Regard his hellish fall, whose fiendful fortune doth exhort the wise only to wonder at unlawful things. Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits to practice more than heavenly power permits. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Death Be Not Proud by John Dunne. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Graham Redman in the Greenwich Tunnel on Sunday the 18th of May 2008. Death Be Not Proud. Though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For those whom thou thinkst, thou dost overthrow, thou art not poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep which but by pictures be much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow, and soonest our best men with thee do go, rest of their bones and soul's delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, and dust with poisons, war, and sickness dwell. And poppy or chance can make us sleep as well and better than thy stroke. Why swellst thou then? One short sleep past we wake eternally, and death shall be no more. Death thou shalt die. An Epitaph on MH. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa Jevons in the Greenwich Tunnel on May 2008. An Epitaph on MH by Charles Cotton. In this cold monument lies one that I know who has lain upon the happier heath, her sight would charm and touch have kept King David warm. Lovely as is the dawning east was this marble's frozen guest. As soft and snowy as that down adorned the blowballs, frizzled crown. As straight and slender as the crest or antlet of the one beamed beast. Pleasant as the odorous months of May, as glorious and as light as day, whom I admired as soon as knew, and now her memory pursue with such a superstitious lust that I could fumble with her dust. She all perfections had and more, tempting as if designed a whore for so she was, and since there are such I could wish them all as fair. Pretty she was, and young and wise, and in her calling so precise that industry had made her prove the sucking school mistress of love. And death's ambitious to become her pupil left his ghastly home and seeing how we used her here, the raw-boned rascal ravished her, who pretty soul resigned her breath to seek new letchery in death. End of recording. I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless, that only men incredulous of despair, half-tort and anguish through the midnight air beat upward to God's throne in loud access of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness, in souls as countries, lyeth silent bear under the blanching vertical eyeglair of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express grief for thy dead, in silence, like to death, most like a monumental statue set in everlasting watch and moveless woe, till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it, the marble eyelids are not wet. If it could weep, it would arise and go. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Last night we had a thunderstorm in style, Robert Louis Stevenson, read for LibriVox.org by Humaguire in the Greenwich Tunnel, May 18, 2008. Last night we had a thunderstorm in style, the wild lightning streaked the airs as though my God fell down a pair of stairs. The thunder boomed and bounded all the while, all cried and sat by waterside in style. To mop our brow had been our chief of cares, I lay in bed with Voltarian's smile, the terror of good, simple, guilty pairs, and made this rondo in ironic style. Last night we had a thunderstorm in style. Our God the Father fell down stairs, the stark blue lightning went in flight the while, the very rain you might have heard a mile, the strenuous, faithful buckled to their prayers. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Futility by Wilfred Owen, read for LibriVox.org by Karl Manchester in the Greenwich Tunnel, 2008. Futility. Move him into the sun, gently its touch awoke him once, at home whispering a field's half-zone, always it woke him, even in France, until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now, the kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds, woke once the clays of a cold star, a limb so dear achieved our sides, full nerve still warm, too hard to stir. Was it for this the clay grew tall, owe what made fatuous some bean's toil to break earth's sleep at all? The end, this poem is in the public domain. In a London drawing room by George Elliott, read for LibriVox.org by David Barnes in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, Sunday, May 18, 2008. The sky is cloudy, yellow by the smoke, for view there are the houses opposite, cutting the sky with one long line of wall like solid fog, far as the eye can stretch, monotony of surface and of form, without a break to hang a guess upon. No bird can make a shadow as it flies for all his shadow, as in ways or hung by thickest canvas, where the golden rays are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering pauses to feed the hunger of the eye, or rest a little on the lap of life, all hurry on the ground, or glance on marking at the passers-by. The wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages all closed, in multiplied identity. The world seems one huge prison house and court, where men are punished at the slightest cost, with lowest rate of colour, warmth and joy. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Sweet Suffolk Owl, read for LibriVox.org by Philippa Jeffens in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, May 2008. Sweet Suffolk Owl, so trimly diet, with feathers like a lady bright, thou sings'd alone, sitting by night. To wit, to woo, to wit, to woo, by note that forth so freely rolls with shrill command the mouse controls and sings a dirge for dying souls. To wit, to woo, to wit, to woo. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Excerpt from Ulysses. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Graham Redman on Sunday the 18th of May 2008 in the Greenwich Tunnel. The closing lines of Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennis. Death closes all. But something ere the end. Some work of noble note may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks. The long day wanes. The slow moon climbs. The deep moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, it is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order, smite the sounding furrows. For my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down. It may be we shall touch the happy aisles and see the great Achilles whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides. And though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. End of recording. The same, yet different. Different, yet the same. Seen by me now in my declining years as in my early childhood, youth and manhood, and by my parents, and by the parents of my parents' parents, and by their parents counted back forever. Seen all their lives long, even as now by me, and by my children, and by my children's children, and by the children of my children's children, and by their children counted on forever, still to be seen as even now seen by me. Clear and bright sometimes, sometimes dark and clouded, but still the same sun setting and sunrise, the same forever to the never-ending line of observers, to the same observer all the changes of his life the same, sun setting and sun rising and sun setting, and then again, sun rising and sun setting, sun rising and sun setting ever more. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. From A Fish Answers by Lee Hunt. This reading for LibriVox.org by Karl Manchester in the Greenwich Tunnel 2008. Man's life is warm, glad, sad, twist loves and graves, boundless in hope, honoured with pangs of steer, heaven gazing, and his angel wings he craves. The fish is swift, small-needing, vague yet clear, a cold sweet silver life, wrapped in round waves, quickened with touches of transporting fear, the end. This recording is in the public domain. Lines written on a window at the Lee's Oaks at a time of very deep snow by William Shenstone, read for LibriVox.org by David Barnes in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel on Sunday, the 18th of May, 2008. In this small fort besieged with snow, when every studious pulse beats low, what does my wish require? Some sprightly girls beneath my roof, some friends sincere and winter-proof, a bottle and a fire. Prolong, O snow, prolong thy siege, with these thou wilt but more oblige, and bless me with thy stay. Extend, extend thy frigid rain, my few sincere friends detain, and keep false friends away.