The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems [by Aldous Huxley]

Though later known for his essays and novels, Aldous Huxley started his writing career as a poet. Published in 1918, The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems is his third compilation of poetry. 

The volume begins with "The Defeat of Youth", a sequence of twenty-two sonnets that explores irreconcilability of the ideal and the disappointing reality. Jerome Meckier called it “the century’s most successful sonnet sequence, better than Auden’s or Edna St. Vincent Millay’s.” In the rest of the volume, Huxley continues to explore themes started in The Burning Wheel, his first volume of poetry, including vision, blindness, and other contrasts. 

link to the free audiobook
The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems [by Aldous Huxley]

The Wind Among the Reeds [by William Butler Yeats]

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. He studied poetry in his youth and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. One of his works, 'The wind among the reeds', published in 1899, by critics' opinion is the main achievement of his early works. Imagery of Yeats' poetry at this time is filled with characters of Celtic mythology and folklore.

link to the free audiobook
The Wind Among the Reeds [by William Butler Yeats]

Bars and Shadows The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin [by Ralph Chaplin]

Ralph Chaplin and many other prominent members of the Industrial Workers of the World were imprisoned under the Espionage Act of 1917 as the United States entered World War I. As with Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, these activists were accused of undermining recruiting efforts and the draft - even of encouraging soldiers to desert. Though they never gained the universal popularity of his anthem "Solidarity Forever," the poems and songs in this volume - composed during his four years in prison - represent the defiant attitude of a true rebel in the face of persecution. 

Read by Ben Adams.

link to the free audiobook

Bars and Shadows: The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin [by Ralph Chaplin]

The Raven And Other Poems [by Edgar Allan Poe] [read by Phil Chenevert] [Audiobook]

Edgar Allan Poe [1809-1849] was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre.






link to the free audiobook

The Raven And Other Poems [by Edgar Allan Poe] [read by Phil Chenevert] [Audiobook]

The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions from American Life In Tales and Poems [by Sherwood Anderson]

“The Triumph of the Egg” is a collection of stories and poems by Sherwood Anderson. Abandoning the interconnected quality of his more famous “Winesburg, Ohio,” the author adopts a variety of perspectives and settings while exploring similar themes: personal growth, disillusionment, loneliness, and urban-rural contrast. In the North American Review, critic Lawrence Gilman wrote, “Mr. Anderson has achieved a beauty that irradiates his page.” Though largely overshadowed by that celebrated, earlier book, “The Triumph of the Egg” remains a foundational work for Modernist literature, proven by its winning the first annual Dial Award from the influential journal The Dial.

Read by Ben Adams.

link to the free audiobook

The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions from American Life In Tales and Poems [by Sherwood Anderson]

The Burning Wheel [by Aldous Huxley] [Audiobook]

Though Aldous Huxley is best known for his later novels and essays, he started his writing career as a poet. The Burning Wheel is his first work, a collection of thirty poems that pay homage in style to poets who wrote in the Romantic or the French symbolist styles. Many of the poems deal with themes of light, darkness, sight, music, art, war, and idealism vs. realism. Though the optimism in his early works waned as he became older, his characteristically optimistic and determined point of view shines through

link to the free audiobook
The Burning Wheel [by Aldous Huxley]

Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War [by Herman Melville]

Published in 1866, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a collection of poems about the Civil War by Herman Melville. Many of the poems are inspired by second- and third-hand accounts from print news sources (especially the Rebellion Record) and from family and friends. A handful of trips Melville took before, during, and after the war provide additional angles of vision into the battles, the personalities, and the moods of war. In an opening note, Melville describes his project not so much as a systematic chronicle (though many of the individual poems refer to specific events) but as a kind of memory piece of national experience. The “aspects” to which he refers in the title are as diverse as “the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance.” Much of the verse is stylistically conventional (more so than modern readers perhaps expect from the author of Moby-Dick), but the shifting subjectivities and unresolved traumas that unfold in the collection merit repeated contemplation. Melville’s Battle-Pieces do not offer a neatly versified narrative of the Civil War but rather kaleidescopic glimpses of shifting emotions and ambivalent reflections of post-war America.

Read in English by Clark University.

link to the free audiobook

Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War [by Herman Melville]

Spirits in Bondage: a cycle of lyrics [by C.S. Lewis]

Spirits in Bondage is C.S. Lewis's first book and the first of his works to be available in the public domain. It was released in 1919 under the pseudonym of Clive Hamilton and was written in a period of darker thought for C.S. Lewis than was later evidenced in his Christian apologist writings.

The darkness of the verse is most evident in Part One (The Prison House), begins to change in the short transitional Part Two (Hesitation) and attains a more hopeful tone in the final Part Three (Escape). Yet a dreamy effect, influenced by Celtic and Druid mythology, persists throughout.

Spirits in Bondage consists of forty poems that provide an intriguing insight into the youthful heart of C.S. Lewis and occasionally provides interesting lyrical foreshadowing of some of the landscapes portrayed in his famous Chronicles of Narnia series.

Read by Robert Garrison

link to the free audiobook

Spirits in Bondage: a cycle of lyrics [by C.S. Lewis]

Twenty One Poems [by Katharine Tynan] [1907]

Katharine Tynan first met W. B. Yeats  in 1885 and formed a lifelong friendship,and Yeats himself selected the poems for this particular anthology. Tynan besides poetry also wrote more than 100 novels, 12 collections of short stories, 3 plays, and anthologies, as well as innumerable articles on social questions such as poor children and women’s working conditions.

Links To The Free Book
Twenty One Poems [by Katharine Tynan] [1907]

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

The four winds of Eirinn [by Ethna Carbery] (1902)

Ethna Carbery (born Anna Johnston) was an Irish journalist, writer and poet. She is best known for the ballad Roddy McCorley.  In 1901 she married poet and folklorist Séamus MacManus and moved with him to Revlin House in County Donegal. It was then that she began writing under the pen name of Ethna Carbery because once she took the last name of MacManus she didn't want to be confused with her husband (also a writer). She died in Revlin House of gastritis the following year, aged 35. Her husband, who was three years her junior, outlived her by 58 years Although MacManus and Johnston were only married for one year her impact on his life ran deep. Her poetry was published by her husband after her death in the The Four Winds of Erin, which was phenomenally successful over the next few years.

link to the free book
The four winds of Eirinn [by Ethna Carbery] (1902)

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

Poems from the Divan of Hafiz [by Hafiz] (Translated by Gertrude Bell)

Hafiz was a Persian poet. His collected works (Divan) are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature. While influenced by Islam, his mystical works are highly regarded by Hindus, Christians and others, and his influence extends to several well-known writers such as Thoreau, Goethe, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. This modest collection of 43 poems is translated by Gertrude Bell.


Read by Kevin W. Davidson

link to the free audiobook
Poems from the Divan of Hafiz [by Hafiz] (Translated by Gertrude Bell)

Christ's company and other poems [Richard Watson Dixon] (1861)

Richard Watson Dixons first published volume of poems, was called ‘Christ's Company,’. These early poems of Dixon were distinguished by not a little of the colour and imagination, and also by something of the eccentricity, that marked the early efforts of the Pre-Raphaelite school. The poems of the first volume, though largely upon religious subjects, are not strictly religious poetry; they are works of picturesque imagination rather than of devotional feeling.

link to the free book
Christ's company and other poems [Richard Watson Dixon] (1861)

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

The Poems of R.H. Stoddard [by Richard Henry Stoddard] (1880)

Richard Henry Stoddards 1857 poem "Roses and Thorns", in a Russian translation by Aleksey Pleshcheyev, was set for voice and piano by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as "Legend", No. 5 from "Sixteen Songs for Children", Op. 54. The song, in turn, was the basis of Anton Arensky's Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky, Op. 35a, for string orchestra. Roses and Thorns and all of Stoddards best work are contained in this volume.

 link to the free book
The poems of R.H. Stoddard [by Richard Henry Stoddard] (1880)

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

Poems of Passion [by Ella Wheeler Wilcox]

Poems of Passion, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.  A collection of love poems. 

Read by Joy Chan.

link to the free audiobook
Poems of Passion [by Ella Wheeler Wilcox]

A story of Carn Brea, essays, and poems [by John Harris] (1863)

John Harris at age twelve, was sent to work at Dolcoath mine where he combined a life of painful labour with the production of poetry celebrating his native landscape around Carn Brea and the scenic splendours of Land's End and the Lizard. He could not afford pen and paper, so he improvised and used blackberry juice for ink and grocery bags for paper. During this period he produced his most important work, the loco-descriptive poem A Story of Carn Brea (1863).

link to the free book
A story of Carn Brea, essays, and poems [by John Harris] (1863)

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

Kensington rhymes [by Compton Mackenzie] (1912)

Compton Mackenzie was a prolific writer of fiction, biography, histories and memoir, as well as a cultural commentator, raconteur and lifelong Scottish nationalist. He was one of the co-founders in 1928 of the Scottish National Party along with Hugh MacDiarmid, RB Cunninghame Graham and John MacCormick. He only produced one book of poetry, which was aimed at children and was delightfully illustrated by J.R Monsell.

link to the free book
Kensington rhymes [by Compton Mackenzie] (1912)

Eidola [by Frederic Manning] [1917]

Frederic Manning (1882-1935), novelist and poet, was born on 22 July 1882 in Sydney Australia. After the onset of WWI Manning enlisted as a private in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry in 1915 and served in France on the Somme. On 30 May 1917 he was commissioned second lieutenant in the Royal Irish Regiment of Foot, but ill health prevented further active service. That year he published his third volume of poetry, Eidola, which includes several war poems.

link to the free book

Eidola [by Frederic Manning] [1917]

Songs of two peoples [by James Riley] (1898)

Irish American poet James Riley devotes his collection Songs of two peoples (1898) to the peoples and places of both New England and Ireland with a third section titled miscellaneous..

link to the free book

Songs of two peoples [by James Riley] (1898)

Songs of the Rockies [by Charles Edwin Hewes] (1922)

Charles Edwin Hewes (1870-1947), who is remembered not only for his poetry but as the builder/operator of the historic Hewes-Kirkwood Inn, site of today's Rocky Ridge Music Center. When not managing the Inn, Hewes devoted his time to writing novels and poetry, including "The America," a 690-page epic poem that he worked on for 17 years. While his poetry revered the lands that would become Rocky Mountain National Park, he in fact opposed the Park's creation, fearing it would lead to excessive commercial development.

link to the free book

Songs of the Rockies [by Charles Edwin Hewes] (1922)

Barrack-room ballads & other poems [by Rudyard Kipling] (1963)

The Barrack-Room Ballads is the collective name given to a series of songs and poems by Rudyard Kipling, dealing with the late-Victorian British Army and mostly written in a vernacular dialect. The series contains some of Kipling's most well-known work, including the poems "Gunga Din", "Tommy" and "Danny Deever", and helped consolidate his early fame as a poet.

Link To The Free Book
Barrack-room ballads & other poems [by Rudyard Kipling] (1963)

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

Chamber Music [by James Joyce]

Chamber Music is a collection of poems by James Joyce, first published in May of 1907. The collection originally comprised thirty-four love poems, but two further poems were added before publication ("All day I hear the noise of waters" and "I hear an army charging upon the land").

Although the poems did not sell well, they received some critical acclaim. Ezra Pound admired the "delicate temperament" of these early poems, while Yeats described "I hear an army charging upon the land" as "a technical and emotional masterpiece". In 1909, Joyce wrote to his wife, "When I wrote [Chamber Music], I was a lonely boy, walking about by myself at night and thinking that one day a girl would love me."

link to the free audiobook

Chamber Music [by James Joyce]

Link To The Free Book

Chamber Music [by James Joyce] [1907]

Poems [by G. K. Chesterton]

Originally published in 1916, this book of poetry by G.K. Chesterton includes 59 poems on a variety of subjects. Included in this are war poems, love poems, religious poems, ballads and more.

Read by volunteer readers.

link to the free audiobook
Poems [by G. K. Chesterton]

The children of the night, a book of poems [by Edwin Arlington Robinson] [1897]

Edwin Arlington Robinson is considered unique among American poets of his time for his devotion to his art; he published virtually nothing during his long career except poetry. Robinson’s single-mindedness eventually won for him both fortune and fame, as well as a firm position in literary history as America’s first important poet of the twentieth century. Here is a very fine volume of this prolific poets work.

Links To The Free Book
The children of the night, a book of poems [by Edwin Arlington Robinson] [1897]

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

Poems [by Isaac Rosenberg] [1922]

Isaac Rosenberg [25 November 1890 – 1 April 1918] was an English poet of the First World War. In June 1916, he was sent with his Battalion to serve on the Western Front in France. He continued to write poetry while serving in the trenches, including Break of Day in the Trenches, Returning we Hear the Larks, and Dead Man's Dump. His Poems from the Trenches are recognised as some of the most outstanding written during the First World War. Having just finished night patrol, he was killed at dawn on 1 April 1918









link to the free book
Poems [by Isaac Rosenberg] [1922]

Songs Of A Sourdough [by Robert W. Service] [1907]

Reputedly the best-selling poetry collection of the 20th century, 'Songs of a Sourdough' is best known for Robert W. Service's classic Yukon ballads, 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew' and 'The Cremation of Sam McGhee'. Service was born in Preston, Lancashire, and grew up in Scotland. In his twenties, he made his way to Canada and settled in the Yukon where he worked as a bank clerk but evidently dreamed of more adventurous pursuits

Links To The Free Book
Songs Of A Sourdough [by Robert W. Service] [1907]

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

Songs of a Sourdough [by Robert W. Service] [Audiobook]

Reputedly the best-selling poetry collection of the 20th century, 'Songs of a Sourdough' is best known for Robert W. Service's classic Yukon ballads, 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew' and 'The Cremation of Sam McGhee'. Service was born in Preston, Lancashire, and grew up in Scotland. In his twenties, he made his way to Canada and settled in the Yukon where he worked as a bank clerk but evidently dreamed of more adventurous pursuits. Service's readings of his poems show that he could adopt either a Scottish or North American accent. Here they are read in an accent that is not too far removed from the place of his birth.

Read in by Phil Benson

link to the free audiobook
Songs of a Sourdough [by Robert W. Service]

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

The Cornflower And Other Poems [by Jean Blewett] [1906]

This very nice 1906 edition of  The Cornflower And Other Poems by Jean Blewett is separated into two parts; narrative poems and miscellaneous poems. One of her poems in this volume, 'Spring' captured the prize of six hundred dollars, offered for the best poem by the Chicago Times-Herald. That may i say was no small amount in those days.

link to the free book
The Cornflower And Other Poems [by Jean Blewett] [1906]

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

Racing Rhymes A Other Verses [by Adam Lindsay Gordon] [1901]

A beautiful and beautifully illustrated 1901 edition of Australian poet and jockey Adam Lindsay Gordon. The subjects for the poems is as you may have guessed are horses .










link to the free book
Racing Rhymes A Other Verses [by Adam Lindsay Gordon] [1901]

Click here for links to more free high quality books by the Author

Verses [by Robert Loveman] [1920]

Robert Loveman's poem, "the Rain Song" [also known as "April Rain"], became very well known and was anthologized in many books of verse. It later inspired the Al Jolson song "April Showers."  Rain Song is uncluded in this fine book of Loveman's verse and is reproduced below.

It isn’t raining rain to me,

It’s raining daffodils;

In every dimpled drop I see

Wild flowers on the hill.

The clouds of grey engulf the day

And overwhelm the town;

It isn’t raining rain to me,

It’s raining roses down.

It isn’t raining rain to me,

But fields of clover bloom,

Where any a buccaneering bee

May find a bed and room.

A health unto the happy

A fig for him who frets.

It isn’t raining rain to me,

It’s raining violets.

link to the free book
Verses [by Robert Loveman] [1920]


Click here for links to more free high quality audiobooks by the Author

Poems [by Henry Reed Conant]

Henry Reed Conant was born in Janesville, Wisconsin in 1872. His first publislied poem appeared in a little story paper in February 1890. Nearly all of Conant's poems were written in Wisconsin, his native state. The trend of his thoughts and genius is toward the more solemn and religious aspects of nature, and of human experience.














Poems [by Henry Reed Conant] [1893]

 









Spray From Helicon [by Henry Reed Conant] [1902]

Love Poems of John Donne [read by Richard Burton] [1962] [Audiobook]

John Donne was an English poet and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. This is a beautiful recording of Love Poems of John Donne read by the one and only Richard Burton.

link to the free audiobook
Love Poems of John Donne [read by Richard Burton] [1962]

The Bull [by Ralph Hodgson] [1913]

Ralph Hodgson released this award winning poetry book in 1913 for which he received the Polignac Prize in 1914. His reputation as a poet rests upon a small number of publications. "The Bull, " " Eve ," " The Bells of Heaven ," and " The Song of Honour ," are regularly included in poetry anthologies.
In 1954, he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

link to the free audiobook
The Bull [by Ralph Hodgson] [1913]

Click here for links to more free high quality Poetry books by the Author

The Ulster Guard At Gettysburg On The First Three Days Of July 1863 [by Henry Abbey] [1891]

On October 4th, 1888 poet Henry Abbey read these verses, at the Dedication of the Battlefield Monument to the Twentieth Regiment of New York State Militia, Eightieth New York Volunteers. Also known as The Ulster Guard due to their mainly Irish soldiers.

link to the free book
The Ulster Guard At Gettysburg On The First Three Days Of July 1863 [by Henry Abbey] [1891]

Click here for links to more free high quality Poetry books by the Author

Poems [by Elizabeth Stoddard] [1895]

Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard [1823-1902] was an American Essayist, Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer. She was born in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, a setting she drew on for her novels. In addition to editing books with her husband, Stoddard produced her own novels: The Morgesons [1862], Two Men [1865], and Temple House [1867]; she also wrote a book for children Lolly Dinks's Doings (1874), and this fine poetry collection, Poems [1895]

link to the free book

Poems [by Elizabeth Stoddard] [1895]

Charing Cross And Other Poems Of The Period [by Cecil Roberts] [1919]

Cecil Roberts [1892-1976] was an English journalist, poet, dramatist and novelist. Roberts worked as a journalist on the Liverpool Post during World War I, first as literary editor and then as a war correspondent. From 1920 for five years he edited the Nottingham Journal. In 1922 he stood for Parliament for the Liberal Party. During World War II Roberts worked for Lord Halifax, who was British Ambassador to the United States. In 1912 he won the Kirke White memorial prize with a poem entitled ‘To The Trent’.

link to the free book
Charing Cross And Other Poems Of The Period [by Cecil Roberts] [1919]

Poems [by Marie Van Vorst] [1903]

Marie Van Vorst [1867-1936] was an American novelist and poet, but is most remembered for going undercover to expose the plight of female workers, Marie went to work in a Lynn, Massachusetts shoe factory under the name of Belle Ballard for "The Woman That Toils," a series for Everybody's Magazine produced by Marie and her sister-in-law, Bessie Van Vorst. This is a quality collection of her poetry published in 1903.

link to the free book

Poems [by Marie Van Vorst] [1903]

White Mountain Vistas [The Crystal hills] [by Lucy Larcom] [1889]

White Mountain Vistas [The Crystal hills] was a booklet of poetry edited byMathews, F. Schuyler and contains three poems by Lucy Larcom, and one by J.G. Whittier.

link to the free audiobook
White Mountain Vistas [The Crystal hills] [by Lucy Larcom] [1889]

Click here for links to more free high quality Poetry books by the Author

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner [by Samual Taylor Coleridge]

For killing an albatross, the mariner and his crew are punished with drought and death. Amidst a series of supernatural events, the mariners life alone is spared and he repents, but he must wander the earth and tell his tale with the lesson that "all things great and small" are important.

Librivox recording of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samual Taylor Coleridge. Read by Kristin Luoma.

link to the free audiobook

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner [by Samual Taylor Coleridge]

The Luggie [And Other Poems] [by David Gray] [1862]

David Gray [1838-1861]was a Scottish poet, who was born on 29 January 1838 at Duntiblae-on-Banks of Luggie, Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire. He lived a very brief life and died after contracting Consumption at the tender age of twenty three. The Luggie, the principal poem of Gray, is a kind of reverie in which the scenes and events of his childhood and his early aspirations are mingled with the music of the stream which he celebrates.

link to the free book
The Luggie [And Other Poems] [by David Gray] [1862]

Click here fore links to more free high quality Poetry books by the Author

Poems [by Alan Seeger] [1917]

Alan Seeger [1888-1916] was an American poet who joined the French Foreign Legion during the first world war, before America entered the conflict. Seegers most famous poem is Rendezvous which begins

"I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,"

Alan Seeger  had his rendezvous with death at Belloy-en-Santerre on July 4, 1916. The poetry he wrote was not published until 1917, a year after his death.





Link To The Free Book
Poems [by Alan Seeger] [1917]

Buddy Jim [by Elizabeth Gordon] [1922]

Elizabeth Gordon [1866-1922] was an American childrens author. She wrote mainly short stories and books of verse, all of which came beautifully illustrated. This particular volume is illustrated by John Rae and is a delightful mixture of poetry and prose.....enjoy






Link To The Free Book
Buddy Jim [by Elizabeth Gordon] [1922]

Click here fore links to more free high quality Poetry books by the Author

Nets to Catch the Wind [by Elinor Wylie] [audiobook]

This is the first volume of Poems by American poet and novelist Elinor Wylie, published in 1921. LibriVox recording of Nets to Catch the Wind by Elinor Wylie. Read by Dan Isaksson; Mary Kay; Bruce Kachuk; Ann Simmons; Jude Ibe; helenjjacobs; Julia Niedermaier; MariaS; Elise C. Boucher; Leonard Wilson

link to the free audiobook
Nets to Catch the Wind [by Elinor Wylie]

Nothing To Wear An Episode In City Life [by William Allen Butler] [1857]

William Allen Butler's  most famous satirical poem, Nothing to Wear, was first published anonymously in Harper's Weekly in 1857 (see 1857 in poetry), though Butler was forced to reveal his name after someone else claimed authorship. This edition come tastefully illustrated and is the best i could find on line for free.

link to the free book
Nothing To Wear An Episode In City Life [by William Allen Butler] [1857]

Click here fore links to more free high quality Poetry books by the Author