The Anger of Compassion

"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree..."

"And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made," etc.

Yes, I was an English major, back in the day, and I read Yeats, so I regarded
this as very cool news: from Slate, we read that the British Library has released a CD, The Spoken Word--Poets, and it includes some stuff you won't believe. Forget Maya Angelou, forget Jewel: this includes the real thing.

The real thing? How about T.S. Eliot reading "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," or Robert Frost rendering "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening?" Gertrude Stein? Ezra Pound? Robert Graves?

But it gets better than that: you can hear William Butler Yeats on "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," you can actually hear Tennyson himself reading "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and there's even a clip of Robert Browning--yes, Robert Browning--doing some of "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix."

So, go read the Slate article, and listen to the clips. Sure, I know the Tennyson and Browning recordings sound lousy, but there was no Dolby process in 1889, so give Browning a break. And yes, that was 1889.

Thank you, British Library, and I want that CD...

(Oh, and you can get to a picture of Innisfree here...)

(And a tip of the hat to Eugene Volokh)

Posted by Craig Ceely at July 9, 2003 01:50 PM