The Wanderer

Translated by W. R Sims

Recited by Charles Bryant

Anglo-Saxon poetry can often be fairly maudlin. I have taken on when reading 'The Wanderer' the mantle of the bard. See him standing now in the fire-lit mead-hall surrounded by the warriors...

John Gielgud in Prospero's Books

A Poem by Charles Bryant


Music and text both admirable,
concept intriguing, performance beyond reproach;
for shapeliness unbeaten. Age is here the apogee.
His voice, coached through the decades,
...

This poem owes a great deal to the first sections of the translation of the Orphic Hymns published by Thomas Taylor in London in 1792 which is available on the Net. The pictures are mostly from Wikimedia and the inspired section of film is of course by Leni Riefenstahl. The music is by Carl...

This beautiful poem by Yeats is really one of his very best. And his best is made of gold and bronze. I dedicate this reading of the poem to The Lady Anne, Maras Veil, whose own beautiful poem 'Dance of the Sacred Flame' made me think of Yeats. AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN I I walk through the long...

Constantine Cavafy 69. GAZING All the beauty I ever saw before - yes, all of it; none of it abandoned - has turned into an archetypal image lost in the creeping foliage of my brain among thick lianas and the wide mouths of carniverous plants. Sometimes when the moon is full the creature stands...

This is a recent poem, written just before Christmas on a very cold December day. It speaks of parting and of the sense of the presence of the distant beloved, the haunting theme of the ferne Geliebte - one familiar in all literature as in life. The music (appropriately enough!) is the first...

This is my 'treatment' (NOT an exact translation!) of the poem 'Becher am boden' from the volume 'Algabal' by the German poet Stefan George (1868-1933). The accompanying picture is 'The Roses of Heliogabalus' by Alma-Tadema and the irresistible music is Sibelius' Belshazzar's Feast. I have...

This is the sixty-fifth poem from the Cavafy canon. If you wish to see the whole series you can find it on my You Tube site http://uk.youtube.com/user/cavafyinenglish 65.IN THE EVENING Experience tells me it wouldn’t have lasted long. The stronger the light the sooner it’s spent. And anyway...

Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins read by Charles Bryant Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be....

Constantine Cavafy 1863-1933, Greek poet living most of his life in Alexandria. This is probably my favourite of Cavafy's poems, the one where the mundane and the divine most closely intermingle. Although he bears many of the stigmata of the rationalist, Cavafy can sometimes take metaphysical...