 A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allen Poe, read for LibriVox.org by Jacob Minger. Take this kiss upon the brow, and, imparting from you now, thus much let me avow. You are not wrong who deem that my days have been a dream, yet, if hope has flown away in a night or in a day, in a vision or in none. Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. I stand am in the roar of a surf-tormented shore, and I hold within my hand grains of the golden sand. How few, yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep. While I weep, while I weep, O God, can I not grasp them with a tighter clasp? O God, can I not save one from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream? End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. A Forsaken Garden by Argenon Charles Swinburne, read for LibriVox.org by Sergio Baldelli. In a coin of the cliff between lowland and highland, at the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, ward round, with rocks, as a nill and island, the ghost of a garden, France the sea. A girdle of brushwood and the thorn encloses the steep-squares lobe of the blossomless bed where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses now lie dead. The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, to the low-lust edge of the long-lown land. If a step should sound or a word be spoken, would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? So long have the gray bear walks lane guestless, through branches and briars. If a man make way, he shall find no life, but the sea-winds restless night and day. The dense harder passage is blind and stifled, that crawls by a track, none turn to climb, to the straight waste place, that the years have rifled of all but the thorns that are touched not the time. The thorns he spares when the rose is staken, the rocks are left when he wastes the plain, the wind that wanders, the weeds when shaken, these remain. Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not, as the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry. On the thicket of the thorns, whence the nightingale calls not, could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Over the meadows, that blossom and the wither, rings but the note of a sea-bird's song. Only the sun and the rain come hither, all year long. The sun burns here, and the rain dishevels, one gaunt bleak blossom of a senseless breath. With the wind here hovers and revels, in a round well life seems barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping happily of the lovers, none ever will know, whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping years ago. Heart hand-fast in heart as they stood, look thither, did he whisper, look forth from the flowers to the sea, for the fove-flowers endure when the rose blossoms wither, and men that love lightly may die. But we, and the same wind sang, and the same waves whitened, and, or ever, the gardens lost the petals were shed. And the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, love was dead. All they loved their life through, and then went weither. And a well one to the end, but what end, who knows? Love deep as the sea as a rose must weither. As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose, shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them. What love was ever as deep as a grave, they are loveless now as the grass above them all the wave. All are at one now, roses and lovers, not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea, not a breath of the time that has been hovers in the air now soft with the summer to be, not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter, all the flowers, all the lovers that laugh now weep, when as they that are free now weeping and laughter we shall sleep. Here death may deal not again forever, here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made, they shall rise up never, who have left to naught a living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones and thorns of the wider ground growing, why the sun and the rain live, these shall be. Till elaster winds breath upon all these blowing roll the sea, till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, till terrace and meadow the deeper gulfs drink, till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble the fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink. Here now in his triumph where all things falter, stretched out on the spores, that his own hand spread as a god self slain on his own strange order, death lies dead. End of the poem, this recording is in the public domain. Annabelle Lee by Edgar Allan Poe, read for Librevox.org by Darcy Smitonar. It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea, that a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabelle Lee, and this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child in this kingdom by the sea, but we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabelle Lee, with a love that the wings the rafts of heaven coveted her and me. And this was the reason that long ago in this kingdom by the sea, a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful Annabelle Lee, so that her highborn kinsmen came and bore her away from me, to shut her up in a sepulchre in this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, went envying her and me. Yes, that was the reason, as all men know in this kingdom by the sea, that the wind came out of the cloud by night, chilling and killing my Annabelle Lee. But our love, it was stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we, of many far wiser than we, and neither the angels in heaven above, nor the demons down under the sea, can ever deceiver my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabelle Lee. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabelle Lee, and the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes of the beautiful Annabelle Lee. And so, all the night tide, I lie down by the side of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, in her sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the side of the sea. The Apology by Ann Kingsmill Finch, Countess of Winchelsea. Read for LibriVox.org by Craig Allen. It is true, I write, and tell me, by what rule I am alone forbid to play the fool, to follow through the groves of wandering mews and feigned ideas for my pleasures choose. Why should it in my pen be held a fault whilst Mira paints her face to paint a thought? Whilst Lamia to the manly bumper flies and borrowed spirits sparkle in her eyes, why should it be in me a thing so vain to heat with poetry my colder brain? But I write ill, and therefore should forbear. Does Flavia cease now at her fortieth year in every place to let that face be seen which all the town rejected at fifteen? Each woman has her weakness, mine indeed, is still to write, though hopeless to succeed. Nor to the men is this so easy found, even in most works with which the wits abound, so weak are all, since our first breach with heaven, there is less to be applauded than forgiven. The Brewing of Soma by John Greenleaf Whittier Red for LibriVox.org by Tricia G. These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indira, offer Soma to the drinker of Soma, Vashista translated by Max Mueller. The faggots blazed, the cauldrons smoke up through the green wood curled, bring honey from the hollow oak, bring milky sap, the brewers spoke, in the childhood of the world. And brewed they well, or brewed they ill, the priests thrust in their rods, first tasted and then drank their fill, and shouted with one voice and will, Behold the drink of gods. They drank, and two in heart and brain a new glad life began. The gray of hair grew young again, the sick man laughed away his pain, the cripple leaped and ran. Drink mortals what the gods have sent, forget your long annoy. So saying the priests, from tent to tent the Soma's sacred madness went, a storm of drunken joy. Then knew each wrapped inebriate, a winged and glorious birth, soared upward with strange joy elate, beat with dazed head, Varuna's gate, and sobered, sank to earth. The land with Soma's praises rang, on Gihan's banks of shade, its hymns the dusky maiden sang, in joy of life or mortal pain, all men to Soma prayed. The morning twilight of the race sends down these mattened Psalms, and still with wondering eyes we trace the simple prayers to Soma's grace, that Vedic verse embalms. As in that child world's early year, each after age has striven, by music incense vigils drear, and trance to bring the skies more near, or lift men up to heaven. Some fever of the blood and brain, some self-exalting spell, the scourger's keen delight of pain, the dervish dance, the orphic strain, the wild-haired backends yell, the desert's hair-grown hermit sunk, the saner brute below, the naked xanthan hashish drunk, the cloister madness of the monk, the fakir's torture show. And yet the past comes round again, and new doth old fulfill, in sensual transports wild as vein, we brew in many a Christian vein the heathen Soma still. Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways, recloth us in our rightful mind, in purer lives thy service find, in deeper reverence praise. In simple trust, like theirs who heard beside the Syrian sea, the gracious calling of our Lord, let us, like them without a word, rise up and follow thee. O Sabbath rest by Galilee, O calm of hills above, where Jesus knelt to share with thee the silence of eternity interpreted by love. With that deep hush subduing all our words and works that drown the tender whisper of thy call, as noiseless let thy blessing fall as fell thy manna down. Drop thy still dues of quietness till all our strivings cease. Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace. Breathe through the heats of our desire thy coolness and thy balm. Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire. Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire, O still small voice of calm. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Chess Play by Nicholas Breton Read for LibriVox by Nullifidian A secret many years unseen, in play at chess who knows the game, first of the king and then the queen, Knight Bishop Rook and so by name, of every pawn I will describe, the nature with the quality. The king. The king himself is haughty care, which overlooketh all his men, and when he seeth how they fare, he steps among them now and then, whom when his foe presumes to check, his servants stand to give the neck. The queen. The queen is quaint and quick conceit, which makes her walk which way she list, and roots them up that lie in wait, to work her trees in air she whisked, her forces such against her foes that whom she meets she overthrows. The knight. The knight is knowledge how to fight against his prince's enemies. He never makes his walk outright, but leaps and skips and wily wise, to take by slight a traitorous foe might slyly seek their overthrow. The bishop. The bishop he is witty brain, that chooses crosses paths to pace, and ever more he pries with pain, to see who seeks him most disgraced, such stragglers when he finds astray, he takes them up and throws away. The Rooks. The Rooks are reason on both sides, which keep the cornerhouses still, and rarely stand to watch their tides by secret art to work their will, to take some time a thief unseen might mischief mean to king or queen. The Pawns. The pawn before the king is peace, which he desires to keep at home. Practice the queens, which doth not cease, amid the world abroad to roam, to find and fall upon each foe, whereas his mistress means to go. Before the knight is peril-placed, which he by skipping over goes, and yet that pawn can work a cast to overthrow his greatest foes. The bishop's prudence prying still, which way to work his master's will. The Rooks poor pawns are silly swains, which seldom serve except by hap, and yet these pawns can lay their trains to catch a great man in a trap, so that I see sometimes the groom may not be spared from his room. The king is stately looking high, the queen doth bear like majesty. The knight is hearty, valiant wise, the bishop prudent and precise. The Rooks are rangers out of ray, the pawns the pages in the play. Then rule with care and quick conceit, and fight with knowledge as with force, so bear a brain to dark deceit, and work with reason and remorse. Forgive a fault when young men play, so give a mate and go your way. And when you play beware of check, know how to save and give a neck. And with a check beware of mate, but chief wear had I whist too late. There's not the queen for ten to one, if she be lost, the game is gone. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. City Girl by Maxwell Boddenheim, read for LibriVox.org by Leanne Howlett. Beneath the barren artifice of red that hides a fertile freshness on your face, I see the hypocritical embrace of cortisone and virgin, each in dread of yielding to the other while your mouth reveals their secret of uneasiness. Your mind has listened to a northern stress. Your heart has heard old rumors from the south. This conflict, with its plaintive undertones, is like an idle phantom to your soul whose clear aloofness sometimes sears your eyes. Essential games that move your youthful bones are still for moments, while the distant goal of whispering horizons lures your sighs. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Darest Thou Now O Saul by Walt Whitman, read for LibriVox.org by Abigail Bartels. Darest Thou Now O Saul, walk out with me toward the unknown region, where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow, no map there nor guide, nor voice sounding nor touch of human hand, nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips nor eyes are in that land. I know it not, O Saul, nor dost Thou, all is a blank before us, all waits undreamed of in that region, that inaccessible land. Still when ties loosen, all but the ties eternal, space and time, nor darkness, gravitation, sense nor any bounds bounding us, then we burst forth, we float in time and space, O Saul, prepared for them, equal, equipped at last, O joy, O fruit of them all, them to fulfill, O Saul. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Doubt of Future Foes by Elizabeth I, Queen of England, read for LibriVox.org by Craig Allen. The Doubt of Future Foes exiles my present joy, and wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy. For false would now doth flow, and subjects faith doth ebb, which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved to the web. And clouds of joy untried do cloak-aspiring mines which turn to reign of late repent by changed course of wines. The top of hope supposed the root-up-reared shall be, and fruitless all their grafted guile as shortly ye shall see. The dazzled eyes with pride which great ambition'd blinds, shall be unsealed by worthy whites whose foresight falsehood finds. The daughter of debate, that discord eye doth so, shall reap no gain where former rule-still peace hath taught to know. No foreign banished white shall anchor in this port. Our realm brooks not seditious sects, let them elsewhere resort. My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge employ, to pole their tops that seek such change, or gape at future joy. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Drummer Hodge by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org by James Martin. 1. They throw in Drummer Hodge to rest uncoffin'd just as found. His landmark is a copycrest that breaks the vellt around, and foreign constellations west each night above his mound. 2. Drummer Hodge the drummer never knew, fresh from his wessex home. The meaning of the broad caroo, the bush, the dusty loam. And why up rose to nightly view, strange stars amid the gloam. 3. Yet portion of that unknown plain will Hodge for ever be. His homely northern breast and brain grow to some southern tree, and strange-eyed constellations reign his stars eternally. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Evening Star by William Blake, recorded for LibriVox.org by Craig Allen, February 9, 2010. Thou fair-haired angel of the evening, now whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light thy bright torch of love, thy radiant crown put on and smile upon our evening bed. Smile on our louts, and while thou drawest the blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew on every flower that shuts its sweet eyes in timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on the lake. Take silence with thy glimmering eyes, and wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon, dost thou withdraw, then the wolf rages wide, and the lion glares through the Dunn forest. The fleeces of our flocks are covered with thy sacred dew. Protect them with thine influence. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Flemond by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Read for LibriVox.org by Leonard Wilson, Springfield, Ohio, February 2010. The man Flemond, from God knows where, with firm address and foreign air, with news of nations and his talk and something royal in his walk, with glint of iron in his eyes, but never doubt, nor yet surprise, appeared and stayed and held his head as one by kings accredited. Erect with his alert repose about him and about his clothes, he pictured all tradition hears of what we owe to fifty years. His cleansing heritage of taste paraded neither once nor waste, and what he needed for his fee to live he borrowed graciously. He never told us what he was or what mischance or other cause had banished him from better days to play the Prince of Castaways. Meanwhile he played surpassing well apart for most unplayable. In fine one pauses half-afraid to say for certain that he played. For that one may as well forego conviction as to yes or no. Nor can I say just how intense would then have been the difference to several, who having striven in vain to get what he was given, would see the stranger taken on by friends not easy to be one. Moreover, many a malcontent he soothed and found munificent. His courtesy beguiled and foiled suspicion that his years were soiled. His men distinguished any crowd his credit strengthened when he bowed. And women, young and old, were fond of looking at the man flamande. There was a woman in our town on whom the fashion was to frown. But while our talk renewed the tinge of a long-faded scarlet fringe, the man flamande saw none of that. And what he saw we wondered at that none of us, in her distress, could hide or find our littleness. There was a boy that all agreed had shut within him the rare seed of learning. We could understand, but none of us could lift a hand. The man flamande appraised the youth and told a few of us the truth. And thereby for a little gold a flowered future was unrolled. There were two citizens who fought for years and years and over not. They made life awkward for their friends and shortened their own dividends. The man flamande said what was wrong should be made right, nor was it long before they were again in line and had each other in to dine. And these I mention are but four of many out of many more. So much for them. But what of him, so firm in every look and limb? What small satanic sort of kink was in his brain? What broken link withheld him from the destinies that came so near to being his? What was he when we came to sift his meaning and to note the drift of incommunicable ways that make us ponder while we praise? Why was it that his charm revealed, somehow, the surface of a shield? What was it that we never caught? What was he, and what was he not? How much it was of him we met, we cannot ever know. For yet shall all he gave us quite a tone for what was his and his alone. Nor need we now, since he knew best, nourish and ethical unrest. Rarely at once will nature give the power to be flamande and live. We cannot know how much we learn from those who never will return, until a flash of unforeseen remembrance falls on what has been. We've each a darkening hill to climb, and this is why from time to time in Tilburytown we look beyond horizons for the man flamande. From the Woolworth Tower, by Sarah Teasdale, read fullybravox.org. Vivid with love, eager for greater beauty, out into the night we come into the corridor, brilliant and warm. A metal door slides open, and the lift receives us, swiftly, with sharp unanswering flight the car shoots upward, and the air, swirling and angry, howls like a hundred devils, past the maze of trim bronze doors, steadily we ascend. I cling to you, conscious of the chasm under us, and a terrible whirling deafens my ears. The flight is ended. We pass through a door leading on to the ledge, wind, night, and space. Oh, terrible height, why have we sought you? Oh, bitter wind with icy invisible wings, why do you beat us? Why would you bear us away? We look through the miles of air, the cool blue miles between us and the city. Over the edge of eternity we look on all the lights, a thousand times more numerous than the stars. Oh, lines and loops of light, and unwound chains that mark for miles and miles the vast black mazy cobweb of the streets. Near us cluster the splashes of living gold that change far off to bluish steel, where the fragile lights on the Jersey shore tremble like drops of wind stirred dew. The strident noises of the city floating up to us are hallowed into whispers. Trees cross through the darkness, weaving a golden thread into the night, their whistles weird shadows of sound. We feel the millions of humanity beneath us, the warm millions moving under the roofs, consumed by their own desires, preparing food, sobbing alone in a garret, with burning eyes bending over a needle, aimlessly reading the evening paper, dancing in the naked light of the cafe, laying out the dead, bringing a child to birth. The sorrow, the torpor, the bitterness, the frail joy come up to us, like a cold fog wrapping us round. Oh, in a hundred years not one of these blood warm bodies but will be worthless as clay. The anguish, the torpor, the toil will have passed two other millions, consumed by the same desires. Ages will come and go. Darkness will blot the lights, and the tower will be laid on the earth. The sea will remain, black and unchanging. The stars will look down, brilliant and unconcerned. Beloved, though sorrow, frailty, defeats around us, they cannot bear us down. Here on the abyss of eternity, love has crowned us for a moment. THE GARDEN by Andrew Marvell Read for LibriVox.org How vainly men themselves amaze to win the palm, the oak, or bays, and their uncessing hand-labour see crowned from some single herb or tree, whose short and narrow verged shade does prudently their toils up-raid, while all the flowers and trees do close to weave the garlands of repose. Fair, quiet, have I found thee here? An innocence thy sister dear. Mistaken long I sought you then in busy companies of men. Your sacred plants, if here below, only among the plants will grow. Society is all but rude to this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen so amorous as this lovely green. Found lovers, cruel as their flame, cut in these trees their mistress's name. All alas they know or heed how far these beauties hers exceed. Fair trees, where so ere your barks I wound, no name shall but your own be found. When we have run our passions heat, love hither makes his best retreat. The gods whose mortal beauty chase, still in a tree, did end their race. Still hunted Daphne so, only that she might laurel grow. And Pan did at this syrinx speed, not as a nymph, but for a reed. What wondrous life is this, I lead. Ripe apples drop about my head. The luscious clusters of the vine upon my mouth do crush their wine. The nectarine and curious peach into my hands themselves do reach. Looking on melons as I pass, ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, withdraws into its happiness. The mind, that ocean where each kind does straight its own resemblance find. Yet it creates, transcending these, far of the worlds and other seas, annihilating all that's made to a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain sliding foot, or at some fruit tree's mossy root, casting the body's vesticide, my soul into the boughs does glide. There like a bird it sits and sings, then wets and combs its silver wings. And till prepared for longer flight, waves in its blooms the various light. Such was that happy garden-state, while man there walked without a mate. After a place so pure and sweet, what other help could yet be meet? But was beyond a mortal share to wander solitary there? Two paradises twer in one, to live in paradise alone. How well the skillful gardener drew of flowers and herbs this dial new. Where from above the milder sun does through a fragrant zodiac run. And as it works the industrious bee computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours be reckoned but with herbs and flowers? This recording is in the public domain, read by Alan Davis Drake. Golf Steals Our Youth by Normand Rowland Gale Read for LibriVox.org by Algie Pug, Perth, Western Australia Have you seen the golfers airy, prancing forth to their vagary, just as frisky in their gaiters as a flock of Grecian satyrs, looking everything heroic and magnificently stoic in a dress of such a pattern as would fright the good God Saturn? Have you heard them curse the sparrow, fit to freeze your innermost marrow, when the ball that should be flitting on the grass remains sitting? Have you watched their cheerful scrambles in the soft and soothing brambles while the foe, elate and sneering, passes gradually from hearing? After blaming all the witches, after rending holes in breeches, after getting in a muddle with each rivulet and puddle, they return, all labour-ended, to record their prowess splendid and renew by dictionary their fatigued vocabulary. Let these gentlemen ecstatic in their costumes so emphatic, crawl to find a rounded pleasure in the horse pond at their pleasure. What's so good when time is sunny and the air as sweet as honey? At the game of Crease and Wicket, England's proper pastime. Cricket? End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. I am the wind by Zoe Acons. Read for LibriWox.org by Marion Martin. I am the wind that wavers. You are the certain land. I am the shadow that passes over the sand. I am the leaf that quivers. You the unshaken tree. You are the stars that are steadfast. I am the sea. You are the light eternal. Like a torch, I shall die. You are the surge of deep music. I but a cry. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. John Gorham by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Read for LibriWox.org by Leonard Wilson, Springfield, Ohio. February 2010. Tell me what you're doing over here, John Gorham, sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you're not. Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot. I'm over here to tell you what the moon already may have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago. I'm over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland, and to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so. Tell me what you're saying to be now, John Gorham, or you'll never see as much of me as ribbons anymore. I'll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers, and you'll not follow far for one where flocks have been before. I'm sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland, but you're the one to make of them as many as you need. And then about the vanishing. It's I who mean to vanish, and when I'm here no longer, you'll be done with me indeed. That's a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham. How am I to know myself until I make you smile? Try to look as if the moon were making faces at you, and a little more as if you meant to stay a little while. You are what it is that over rose-blown gardens makes a pretty flutter for a season in the sun. You are what it is that with a mouse, Jane Wayland, catches him and lets him go and eats him up for fun. Sure, I never took you for a mouse, John Gorham. All you say is easy, but so far from being true that I wish you wouldn't ever be again the one to think so. For it isn't cats and butterflies that I would be to you. All your little animals are in one picture, one I've had before me since a year ago tonight, and the picture where they live will be of you, Jane Wayland, till you find a way to kill them or to keep them out of sight. Won't you ever see me as I am, John Gorham, leaving out the foolishness and all I never meant? Somewhere in me there's a woman, if you know the way to find her. Will you like me any better if I prove it and repent? I doubt if I shall ever have the time, Jane Wayland, and I dare say all this moonlight lying round us might as well fall for nothing on the shards of broken urns that are forgotten. As on two that have no longer much of anything to tell. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Mending Wall by Robert Frost, read for LibriVox.org by Darcy Smitunar. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that sends the frozen grounds well under it and spills the upper boulders in the sun and makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing. I've come after them and made repair where they have left not one stone on a stone, but they would have the rabbit out of hiding to please the helping dogs. The gaps I mean, no one has seen them made or heard them made, but at spring mending time we find them there. I let my neighbor know be on the hill and on a day we meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go to each the boulders that have fallen to each and some are loaves and some so nearly balls we have to use a spell to make them balance. Stay where you are until our backs are turned. We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game. One on the side, it comes to little more. There where it is we do not need the wall. He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines I tell him. He only says good fences make good neighbors. Spring is the mischief in me and I wonder if I could put a notion in his head. Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd asked to know what I was walling in or walling out and to whom I was like to give a fence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall that wants it down. I could say elves to him, but it's not elves exactly and I'd rather he said it for himself. I see him there bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top in each hand like an old stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying and he likes having thought of it so well, he says again, good fences make good neighbors. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Morning by Emily Dickinson. Read for LibriVox.org by Leanne Howlett. Will there really be a morning? Is there such a thing as day? Could I see it from the mountains if I were as tall as they? Has it feet like water lilies? Has it feathers like a bird? Is it brought from famous countries of which I've never heard? Oh, some scholar, oh, some sailor, oh, some wise man from the skies, please to tell a little pilgrim where the place called morning lies. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Bored to a pig while his nose was being bored. By Robert Southy. Read for LibriVox.org by Jason Mills. Hark, hark, that pig, that pig, the hideous note. More loud, more dissonant each moment grows. Would one not think the knife was in his throat? And yet they are only boring through his nose. You foolish beast, so rudely to withstand your master's will to feel such idle fears. Why, pig, there's not a lady in the land who has not also bored and ringed her ears. Pig, it is your master's pleasure. Then be still and hold your nose to let the iron through. Dare you resist your lawful sovereign's will? Rebellious swine, you know not what you do. To man or beast the power was given. Pig, hear the truth and never murmur more. Would you rebel against the will of heaven? You impious beast, be still and let them bore. The social pig resigns his natural rights when first with man he covenants to live. He barters them for safest tidy lights, for grains and wash, which man alone can give. Sure is provision on the social plan. Secure the comforts that to each belong. Oh happy swine, the impartial sway of man alike protects the weak pig and the strong. And you resist. You struggle now because your master has thought fit to bore your nose. You grunt in flat rebellion to the law society finds needful to impose. Go to the forest, piggy, and deplore the miserable lot of savage swine. See how the young pigs fly from the great bore and see how coarse and scantily they're dying. Behold, they're hourly danger when who will may hunt or snare or seize them for his food. Oh happy pig, whom none presumes to kill, till your protecting master thinks it good. And when at last the closing hour of life arrives, for pigs must die as well as man, when in your throat you feel the long sharp knife and the blood trickles to the pudding pan, and when at last the death wound yawning wide, fainter and fainter grows the expiring cry, is there no grateful joy, no loyal pride, to think that for your master's good you die? End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Sonic 121 by William Shakespeare. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed. When not to be receives the approach of being and the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed, not by our feeling, but by others seeing. For why should others false adulterate eyes give salutation to my sport of blood, or on my frailties why a frail espies, which in their wills come bad when I think good? No, I am that I am, and they that level at my abuses reckon up their own. I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel, by their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown. Unless this general evil they maintain, all men are bad and in their badness reign. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. To Althea from Prison by Richard Lovelace. Read for LibriVox.org by Algie Pug. When love with unconfined wings hovers within my gates, and my divine Althea brings to whisper at the greats, when I lie tangled in her hair, and fettered to her eye, the gods that want an in the air know no such liberty. When flowing cups run swiftly round with no allaying Thames, our careless heads with roses bound, our hearts with loyal flames, when thirsty grief in wind we steep, when healths and draughts go free, fishes that tipple in the deep know no such liberty. When, like committed linnets, I with shriller throat shall sing the sweetness, mercy, majesty, and glories of my king, when I shall voice aloud how good he is, how great should be in larger winds that curl the flood, know no such liberty. Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, mine's innocent and quiet take that for a hermitage. If I have freedom in my love, and in my soul am free, angels alone that soar above, enjoy such liberty. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Valentine's song by Robert Argyle Campbell, read for LibriVox.org by Marion Martin. Dearest, let these roses in their purity be a present symbol of my love for thee. Underneath the blossom, thorns are sure to grow, take heed lest you touch them, they would pain you so. Ah, my faults like thorns are, but cannot they be hidden beneath the flower of my love for thee. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.