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Poet
John Keats
B. 1795 D. 1821
Keats was born in London in 1795. His father was killed in a riding accident when Keats was eight; his mother died six years later, probably from tuberculosis. The loss of his parents, especially of his mother, was to help…
The Classics
Ode on Melancholy
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
Ode on Melancholy - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the…
The Classics
Ode to a Nightingale
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minuute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,…
The Classics
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pil’d books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starred face, Huge…
The Classics
Bright Star
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
Bright Star - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art ? Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round…
The Classics
Where be ye going, you Devon maid?
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
Where be ye going, you Devon maid? - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
Where be ye going, you Devon maid?And what have ye there i’ the basket?Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy,Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?I love your meads, and I love your flowers,And I love…
The Classics
On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer
Read by Simon Russell Beale
by John Keats
On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer - John Keats - Read by Simon Russell Beale
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That…
The Classics
To Autumn
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
To Autumn - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit…
Poet
Amy Lowell
B. 1874 D. 1925
Amy Lowell was born into an affluent Massachusetts family and educated at home and in private schools in Boston. Her financial resources helped her develop a liberated and unconventional lifestyle. Amy Lowellonce remarked that God had made her a businesswoman…
Poet
Jane Draycott
B. 1954
Jane Draycott studied at King’s College London and Bristol, where she took a postgraduate degree in Medieval English Literature. Her most recent poetry collection, Over, (Carcanet, 2009) was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Her first two collections No…
Poet
Matthew Francis
B. 1956
Matthew Francis was born in Hampshire in 1956 and educated at the City of London School and Magdalene College, Cambridge. After more than ten years in the IT industry, he enrolled at Southampton University in 1994 to study for a…
Poet
Mark McWatt
B. 1947
Mark McWatt was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and attended schools all over the country, including mission schools in interior districts, as his father was a District officer in the colonial government of the time. He studied English at the University…
Poet
Pascale Petit
B. 1953
Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in Wales and France, and now lives in Cornwall. She is of French/Welsh/Indian heritage. She graduated from the Royal College of Art and spent the first part of her life as a…
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Poet
David Constantine
B. 1944
“Poetry now, every bit as much as in the Romantic age, is a utopian demonstration, by aesthetic means, of what true freedom would be like. It engages us to imagine something better than what at present we are afflicted with;…
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Guided Tour
Poet
John Milton
B. 1608 D. 1674
John Milton was born in 1608 in Bread Street, Cheapside, the son of a composer and scrivener. He was educated at St Paul’s School and Christ’s College, Cambridge and seemed destined for the priesthood. However, at Cambridge he began to…