LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 recordings of The Flight by Lloyd Mifflin (1846-1921).
This was the Weekly Poetry project for June 19 – June 26, 2011.
Lloyd Mifflin first received art instruction from his father and then at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, as well as studying in Germany. He later believed that the paint fumes were affecting his health, so he turned to writing poetry. He eventually published over 500 sonnets.
The Flight is from The Golden Treasury or American Songs and Lyrics (1897) – edited by Frederic Lawrence Knowles (1864 – 1905) (summary by David Lawrence)
Download locations: mp3 128kb : mp3 64kb : ogg vorbis.
Catalogue pages: LibriVox, Internet Archive.
Zip of the entire book (9.2MB@64kb), featuring all the different readers for this project.
The Flight
Upon a cloud among the stars we stood.
The angel raised his hand and looked and said,
“Which world, of all yon starry myriad
Shall we make wing to?” The still solitude
Became a harp whereon his voice and mood
Made spheral music round his haloed head.
I spake—for then I had not long been dead—
“Let me look round upon the vasts, and brood
A moment on these orbs ere I decide …
What is yon lower star that beauteous shines
And with soft splendor now incarnadines
Our wings?—There would I go and there abide.”
He smiled as one who some child’s thought divines:
“That is the world where yesternight you died.”
This week’s poem can be found here.
