Ye Old Reading Room

-- By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- 

The midnight ride of Paul Revere delivered the news that the U.S. Revolutionary War was beginning, and that hostile British troop enforcements were beginning their military invasion of the American colonies. Longfellow commemorated the historic act with this poem, first published in The Atlantic Monthly in January 1861. In Longfellow's poetry collection, The Tales of a Wayside Inn, Paul Revere's Ride was retitled The Landlords Tale!

-- By Walt Whitman --

This memorial poem for Abraham Lincoln was published less than 7 months after his death. Whitman and Lincoln never met, but Whitman accounts in his writings that he saw the President many times, even in the same room some of those times.

Unlike yesterdays reading, Oration for Abraham Lincoln By Frederick Douglass, Whitman had unwavering admiration for the President in every way. If you wanna know more, listen to Douglass' Oration, the most recent episode.

-- By Frederick Douglass --

Eleven years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass delivered this speech at the unveiling of the first Lincoln Memorial statue in Washington D.C. (The famous Lincoln Memorial Building was later constructed between 1914 and 1922.

150 years later this oration helps give a lens into the true contemporary view of President Lincoln, an insight that does not exaggerate or brush over the faults of the former President.

-- By William Butler Yeats --

Also known as W.B. Yeats, he was a 20th century Irish poet, dramatist, and writer. 

-- By John Hartley --

Hartley lived from 1839 to 1915 and published 18 compendiums of tales and lyrics. He specialized in works of the Yorkshire dialect, as you hear in this episode. 

**Excuse my poor accent; read as written**

-- By Christina Rossetti -- 

Besides her numerous work of children's poetry and stories, Christina primarily produced poetry with a strong religious focus. 

-- By Edgar Allen Poe --

The Tell-Tale Heart was first published in the ill-fated Boston magazine The Pioneer: A Literary and Critical Magazine in 1843. Since then, it has become one of Poe's most well known narratives and was publish multiple times during Poe's short life.

-- By John Keats --

In this piece, Keats' envisions himself as the 'sod' that the nightingale watches over. Ode to a Nightingale is one of six that Keats wrote culminating in Ode to Autumn. Experts theorize, based on Keats' writings, that this ode was written between April and May 1819 under a plum tree.

-- By Christina Rossetti -- 

This is the title poem from Christina Rossetti's first poetry collection: Goblin Market & Other Poems, first published in 1862. 

-- By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- 

This poem was actually run in the Atlantic Souvenir Special Christmas & New Years offering issue in 1826. At that time, Longfellow was only 19 years old!