The Old Year's gone away To nothingness and night: We cannot find him all the day Nor hear him in the night: He left no footstep, mark or place In either shade or sun: The last year he'd a neighbour's face, In this he's known by none. All nothing everywhere: Mists we on mornings see Have more of substance when they're here And more of form than he. He was a friend by every fire, In every cot and hall— A guest to every heart's desire, And now he's nought at all. Old papers thrown away, Old garments cast aside, The talk of yesterday, Are things identified; But time once torn away No voices can recall: The eve of New Year's Day Left the Old Year lost to all.
The Old Year by John Clare (1793 to 1864) This week's poem can be found at this link.
My recording of this week’s poem has a running time of 1m 33s.
It is available to download in a choice of 3 formats: mp3, 128kb : mp3, 64kb : ogg vorbis
Or you can listen to it now, by clicking the following play button.
http://www.archive.org/download/theoldyear_1401.poem_librivox/oldyear_clare_rn_64kb.mp3″
This was the weekly poetry project for December 29th 2013 to January 5th, 2014.
John Clare was an English poet, the son of a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was “the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self”.
(Summary from Wikipedia)
Additionally, this project is catalogued at LibriVox and the Internet Archive, where you can also download and listen to 12 other LibriVox volunteers, who have participated in this project.
Total running time for this project is 00:17:26. Download: Zip file, 8MB or torrent file
Book Coordinator: David Lawrence
Meta Coordinator: David Lawrence
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