Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

An upper chamber in a darkened house,
Where, ere his footsteps reached ripe manhood’s brink,
Terror and anguish were his cup to drink, –
I cannot rid the thought, nor hold it close;
But dimly dream upon that man alone; –
Now though the autumn clouds most softly pass;
The cricket chides beneath the doorstep stone,
And greener than the season grows the grass.
Nor can I drop my lids, nor shade my brows,
But there he stands beside the lifted sash;
And with a swooning of the heart, I think
Where the black shingles slope to meet the boughs,
And – shattered on the roof like smallest snows –
The tiny petals of the mountain-ash.