81 Famous Poems

Listen to the sound of English as it was meant to be heard. This collection of timeless British and American poems is an experience to be treasured. The readings, by brilliant classic actors Alexander Scourby, Nancy Wickwire, and Bramwell Fletcher, are presented in the order they appear in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Third Edition, and are selected for their ability to delight. The poetry is also among the most anthologized verse in the English language. Included are such best loved works as Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?," John Donne's "Go and Catch a Falling Star," Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," Robert Burns' "A Red, Red Rose," John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Walt Whitman's "Oh Captain, My Captain," and William Butler Yeats' "The Wild Swans at Coole" - a total of 81 major poems from 39 poets. It is simply a collection of the best.

01. Anonymous Early Song: The Cuckoo Song
02. Sir Thomas Wyatt: Whoso List to Hunt
03. Sir Walter Raleigh: The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
04. Sir Walter Raleigh: The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage
05. Sir Philip Sidney: Sonnet 1 from Astrophel and Stella
06. Christopher Marlowe: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
07. William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18 - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
08. William Shakespeare: Sonnet 29 - When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
09. William Shakespeare: Sonnet 116 - Let me not to the marriage of true minds
10. William Shakespeare: Sonnet 129 - Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame
11. Thomas Campion: When to Her Lute Corina Sings
12. Thomas Campion: Rose-cheeked Laura
13. Thomas Campion: There is a Garden in Her Face
14. John Dunne: Song - Go and catch a falling star
15. John Dunne: The Sun Rising
16. John Dunne: Sonnet 10 from Holy Sonnets - Death, be not proud
17. Ben Johnson: Song: To Celia
18. Robert Herrick: The Argument of His Book
19. Robert Herrick: Delight in Disorder
20. Robert Herrick: To the Virgins to Make Much of Time
21. Robert Herrick: Upon Julia's Clothes
22. George Herbert: The Collar
23. George Herbert: The Pulley
24. George Herbert: Love (III)
25. John Milton: When I Consider How My Light Is Spent (a.k.a. On His Blindness)
26. John Suckling: Song - Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
27. John Suckling: Out upon It! (aka The Constant Lover)
28. Richard Lovelace: To Althea, from Prison
29. Andrew Marvell: To His Coy Mistress
30. Andrew Marvell: The Definition of Love
31. Henry Vaughan: The Retreat
32. John Dryden: A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
33. Thomas Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
34. William Blake: from Poetical Sketches, Song
35. William Blake: from Songs of Innocence, Introduction
36. William Blake: from Songs of Innocence, The Lamb
37. William Blake: from Songs of Experience, The Tyger
38. Robert Burns: To Mouse
39. Robert Burns: A Red, Red Rose
40. William Wordsworth: She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways
41. William Wordsworth: Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
42. William Wordsworth: My Heart Leaps Up
43. William Wordsworth: The World Is Too Much With Us
44. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Kubla Khan CD-2
01. George Gordon, Lord Byron: She Walks in Beauty
02. George Gordon, Lord Byron: When We Two Parted
03. Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias
04. Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ode to the West Wind
05. Percy Bysshe Shelley: To a Skylark
06. Percy Bysshe Shelley: Adonais (stanzas 1, 39, 54, and 55)
07. John Keats: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
08. John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn
09. John Keats: Bright Star
10. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Concord Hymn
11. Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Rhodora
12. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese: 1, 43
13. Edgar Allan Poe: To Helen
14. Edgar Allan Poe: The City in the Sea
15. Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee
16. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Break, Break, Break
17. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Songs from The Princess, The Splendor Falls
18. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Tears, Idle Tears
19. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
20. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: The Eagle
21. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Crossing the Bar
22. Robert Browning: My Last Duchess
23. Robert Browning: Home-Thoughts from Abroad
24. Walt Whitman: Song of Myself (parts 1, 6, 21 and 31)
25. Walt Whitman: O Captain! My Captain!
26. Matthew Arnold: Dover Beach
27. Emily Dickinson: 303 - The Soul selects her own Society
28. Emily Dickinson: 986 - A narrow Fellow in the Grass
29. Christina Rossetti: Up-Hill
30. Algernon Charles Swinburne: The Garden of Proserpine
31. Thomas Hardy: The Darkling Thrush
32. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Pied Beauty
33. Alfred Edward Housman: Lovliest of Trees, the Cherry Now
34. Alfred Edward Housman: With Rue My Heart Is Laden
35. William Butler Yeats: The Lake Isle of Innisfree
36. William Butler Yeats: The Wild Swans at Coole