Readings of great or naff poems

Charles Wolfe (14 December 1791 -- 21 February 1823) was an Irish poet. Born at Blackhall, County Kildare, the youngest son of Theobald Wolfe of Blackhall (descended from the Wolfe family of Forenaughts House, Co. Kildare), by his wife Frances, daughter of The Rev. Peter Lombard. Wolfe's grandfather (a first cousin of Lord Kilwarden) was the godfather, but widely believed to be the natural father of Theobald Wolfe Tone. Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore, KB (13 November 1761 -- 16 January 1809) was a British soldier and General. He is best known for his military training reforms and for his death at the Battle of Corunna, in which his force was defeated but gained a tactical advantage a French army under Marshal Soult during the Peninsular War.

CJ Dennis' Australaise, written circa 1915 and proudly sung as soldiers went to war. I left out the extra word. Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis, better known as C. J. Dennis, (7 September 1876 - 22 June 1938) was an Australian poet famous for his humorous poems, especially "The Sentimental Bloke", published in the early 20th century.

Stoush O Day The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke is a verse novel by Australian novelist and poet C. J. Dennis. The book sold over 60,000 copies in nine editions within the first year, and is probably one of the highest selling verse novels ever published in Australia. Contents: A Spring Song The Intro The Stoush O' Day Doreen The Play The Stror 'at Coot The Siren Mar Pilot Cove Hitched Beef Tea Uncle Jim The Kid The Mooch o' Life

Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 -- 7 March 1971) was an English poet and novelist.

George Herbert (3 April 1593 -- 1 March 1633) was a Welsh poet, orator and Anglican priest. Being born into an artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education which led to his holding prominent positions at Cambridge University and Parliament. As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, England, George Herbert excelled in languages and music. He went to college with the intention of becoming a priest, but his scholarship attracted the attention of King James I/VI. Herbert served in parliament for two years. After the death of King James and at the urging of a friend, Herbert's interest in ordained ministry was renewed. In 1630, in his late thirties he gave up his secular ambitions and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as a rector of the little parish of Fugglestone St Peter with Bemerton St Andrew, near Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill, and providing food and clothing for those in need. Throughout his life he wrote religious poems characterized by a precision of language, a metrical versatility, and an ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favoured by the metaphysical school of poets. Charles Cotton described him as a "soul composed of harmonies". Herbert himself, in a letter to Nicholas Ferrar said of his writings, "they are a picture of spiritual conflicts between God and my soul before I could subject my will to Jesus, my Master" . Some of Herbert's poems have endured as hymns, including "King of Glory, King of Peace" (Praise), "Let All the World in Every Corner Sing" (Antiphon) and "Teach me, my God and King" (The Elixir) . A distant relative is the modern Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert.

The Journey of the Magi is a poem by T. S. Eliot. The poem was written after Eliot's conversion to Christianity and confirmation in the Church of England in 1927 and published in Ariel Poems in 1930.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Persian: رباعیات عمر خیام) is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048--1131), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. A Persian ruba'i is a two line stanza with two parts (or hemistechs) per line, hence the word "Rubaiyat", (derived from the Arabic root word for 4), meaning "quatrains".

Sohrab & Rustum is a narrative poem with strong tragic themes: first published in 1853 by Matthew Arnold.

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright

A poem by Alan Brownjohn, a distant cousin by marriage between my uncle Jack Ball and his first wife, Peggy Brownjohn, dearly loved. We are Going to see the Rabbit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Brownjohn http://learnenglishonline.yuku.com/topic/11111/To-See-the-Rabbit-by-Alan-Brownjohn#.T6c2qFo2ze7

John Clare (13 July 1793 -- 20 May 1864) was an English poet, born the son of a farm labourer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is often now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets . His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self"

Horatius Cocles, "Horatius the one-eyed", was a Roman hero who defended the Pons Sublicius, the bridge that led across the Tiber to Rome, against the Etruscans in the second battle of the Naevian Meadow. Horatius was rewarded with as much land as he could plough around in a single day and a statue of him was erected in the temple of Vulcan. It is not known to what extent the story is based on real events. Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Babington Macaulay http://conservativeweasel.blogspot.com/2011/12/horatius.html http://www.bartleby.com/360/7/158.html

Walter Savage Landor (30 January 1775 -- 17 September 1864) was an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equaled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament.

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 -- 30 May 1744) was an eighteenth-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson. Pope is famous for his use of the heroic couplet.

Alfred Edward Housman (pronounced /ˈhaʊsmən/; 26 March 1859 -- 30 April 1936), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900. Their wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, in spare language and distinctive imagery, appealed strongly to late Victorian and Edwardian taste, and to many early twentieth century English composers (beginning with Arthur Somervell) both before and after the First World War. Through its song-setting the poetry became closely associated with that era, and with Shropshire itself.

Francis Thompson (16 December 1859 -- 13 November 1907) was an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book, Poems in 1893. Francis Thompson lived as an unbalanced invalid in Wales and at Storrington, but wrote three books of poetry, with other works and essays, before dying of tuberculosis in 1907.

Robert Laurence Binyon (10 August 1869 at Lancaster -- 10 March 1943 at Reading, Berkshire) was an English poet, dramatist, and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services. === I was raised as an Atheist. I learned, after reading the Bible, that God loves me, and you. This is his song for you too. He loves you, and wants to be with you. All the elements are me and mine. ARIA ISRC number AUAWN1007112

Brian Patten (born 7 February 1946, Liverpool, Lancashire, England) is an English poet. Born near Liverpool's docks, he attended Sefton Park School in the Smithdown Road area of Liverpool, where he was noted for his essays and greatly encouraged in his work by Harry Sutcliffe his form teacher. He left school at fifteen and began work for The Bootle Times writing a column on popular music. One of his first articles was on Roger McGough and Adrian Henri, two pop-oriented Liverpool Poets who later joined Patten in a best-selling poetry anthology called The Mersey Sound, drawing popular attention to his own contemporary collections Little Johnny's Confession (1967) and Notes to the Hurrying Man (1969). Patten received early encouragement from Philip Larkin.

Roger Joseph McGough CBE (born 9 November 1937) is a well-known English performance poet. He presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please and records voice-overs for commercials, as well as performing his own poetry regularly. He is a Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University and is a Vice President of the Poetry Society

"Anthem for Doomed Youth" is a well-known popular poem written by Wilfred Owen which incorporates the themes of the horror of war. It employs the traditional form of a petrarchan sonnet, but it uses the rhyme scheme of an English sonnet. Much of the second half of the poem is dedicated to funeral rituals suffered by those families deeply affected by World War One. The poem does this by following the sorrow of common soldiers in one of the bloodiest battles of the 20th Century. Written between September and October of 1917, when Owen was a patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh recovering from shell shock, the poem is a lament for young soldiers whose lives were unnecessarily lost in the First World War. While at hospital, Owen met and became close friends with another poet, Siegfried Sassoon. Owen asked for his assistance in refining his poems rough drafts. It was Sassoon who named the start of the poem "anthem", and who also substituted "dead" for "doomed"; the famous epithet of "patient minds" is also a correction of his. The amended manuscript copy, in both men's handwriting, still exists and may be found at the Wilfred Owen Manuscript Archive on the world wide web. The poem has been widely publicised and can be found on the "First World War Poetry Digital Archive " which is hosted on the internet.

And death shall have no dominion is a poem written by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953).

Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 -- 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.

Acquainted with the Night is a poem by Robert Frost. It first appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review and was published in 1928 in his collection West-Running Brook.

"The Charge of the Light Brigade" is an 1854 narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson about the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. He was the poet laureate of the United Kingdom at the time of the writing of the poem and the work reflects his compromised ability to express anti-war, populist sentiments while still reflecting his patriotism and remaining in the Crown's favour.