Showing results by narrator "Denis Daly" in All Categories

In this poem, Arnold tells the story of an Oxford student who abandons academic life to join a band of gypsies. He learns their mysterious, almost magical, and clearly unacademic knowledge and devotes himself to a lifelong quest for direct perception of truth. Unlike the people with whom the poet is surrounded, he never becomes distracted or challenged by corrosive doubt or concern about the trivialities of suburban life.

Although Kabir (1398-1448, or in the Samvat calendar 1440-1518) was born of Mohammedan parentage, in his youth he became a disciple of a noted Hindu ascetic, Ramananda. As a spiritual teacher, he decried the meaningless rituals of both Islam and Hinduism, and preached a path of righteousness, which involved respect toward all things in creation, and detachment from worldly preoccupations. While his teaching provoked hostility from both Muslims and Hindus, after his death each religion claimed him as a saint.

Young Cedric lives with his widowed mother in New York. His late father was a British earl who had been disowned by his father for marrying an American. As all of the earl of Dorincourt's sons have now died, he begrudgingly looks to Cedric as his sole heir. While the earl soon comes to love the endearing little Cedric, conflict arises when a strange woman appears on the scene and insists that her son is the true heir.

While the issues of the day that consumed the attention of scholar, accomplished linguist, politician and severe Puritan, John Milton (1608-1674) are now largely of historical interest, the verse which they inspired remains a staple of English literature.

Caliban is a major character in The Tempest by Shakespeare. He is a deformed monster, the offspring of Sycrorax, a witch. Prospero, a magician who presides over the island where Caliban dwells, has made him a servant. This galls Caliban's spirit, as he believes himself to be the rightful ruler of the island. Setebos is the deity who was worshipped by Sycorax and is mentioned by Caliban in two scenes.

Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses was Paterson's second collection of poems and was published in 1902. Among the 46 poems are some of Paterson's best-known pieces of verse, including "Rio Grande's Last Race" and "Mulga Bill's Bicycle"

First published in the Bulletin in the nineties, Paterson's verse has enjoyed enduring success throughout Australian literary history. Paterson had an intimate knowledge of life in the outback: he knew bushmen and he knew horses. His boundary riders and shearers, his buckjumpers and station hands, are real characters—the first realistic portraits of Australians in the bush at work and play to appear in verse. Many of the characters he created have so imprinted themselves on the public imagination that they have become part of Australian folklore.

This collection contains several of Tennyson’s best-known poems and shows his mastery of both lyricism and epic narrative.

Wells had a keen interest in the political and social issues of his day, one of the most significant of which was the outbreak of the First World War. This book, written in 1916, presents the story of Mr Britling, a political commentator, living in comfortable security in his country estate at...

This collection of 35 short poems was first published in 1927, and is a sequel to When We Were Very Young, which was the first anthology of verse dealing with the domestic adventures of Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh.

Epithalamion is an ode included in an anthology, Amoretti, first published in 1595. Spenser's purpose was to celebrate his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle whose marriage with him is glorified in the Epithalamion.

This enigmatic poem is attributed to Seng-t'san, the third Chinese patriarch of Zen, who died in 606 CE. The tone of the work is revealed in the opening stanza in which the patriarch recommends dynamic introspection as the ideal attitude in solving the apparent problems of life. He urges the seeker neither to become trapped in the "outer entanglements of life" nor to isolate himself in solitude, but to remain calm in the procession of personal vicissitudes, seeing the essential oneness of all things.

In the early twentieth century, it was often said that “Australia rides on the sheep’s back”—a reflection of the nation’s dependence on the wool trade. Accordingly, a vast itinerant army of labourers was required to shear the sheep and prepare fleeces for market. In this essay, Rolf Boldrewood provides a vivid picture of the shearing season on a large property.

The authorship of this Gospel has been widely disputed. Some scholars accept that it was really written by Nicodemus, the Pharisee who visited Jesus by night, as described in chapter three of John’s Gospel. Others have conjectured that the Gospel was a forgery made towards the close of the third century by some zealous believer who imagined it would aid the spread of Christianity. Jeremiah Jones notes that such pious frauds were very common among Christians even in the first three centuries, and that the circulation of forgeries of this nature seems natural and probable.

This play is a dramatization of Boccaccio’s story of Gillette of Narbonne. Only the comic parts were of Shakespeare’s invention; he added the characters of the pusillanimous Parolles, the lofty courtier Lafew, the Clown Lavatch, and the long suffering Countess. He gave new depth and vitality...

E. Clerihew Bentley is credited with the invention of the ‘clerihew’, or humorous verse aphorism, on biographical subjects. This collection, which was illustrated by G. K Chesterton, contains thirty-nine irregular quatrains on historical and contemporary celebrities, starting with Sir Christopher Wren and concluding with the publisher, T. Werner Laurie.

This collection contains miscellaneous notes and fragments found after the death of Baudelaire. They reveal in miniature the many and varied aspects of the moral and intellectual life of the author. Included are reflections not only on poetry, but also on painting and music, displaying Baudelaire’s finely honed critical instincts.

Although he refused to ally himself with a specific denomination, religious scholar Paul Carus had a particular reverence for Buddhism, and in 1896, published this succinct guide to the basic doctrines of the religion.

The Castle of Indolence was published early in the summer of 1748, four months after the poet’s death. The work was a slow and leisurely composition, which took nearly fifteen years to complete. The poem consists of 158 stanzas, divided into two cantos. It is presented as an allegory and was professedly written in imitation of The Faerie Queene. The origin of the poem appears to be the frequent remonstrances of Thomson’s friends about the poet’s well-known indolence, regarding both life and composition.

Thomas Troward (1847-1916) was the founder of a syncretic metaphysical system, which he called Mental Science. He claimed that his philosophy was supported by the Bible, which he quoted copiously in his various books. In this pamphlet, published while the First World War was raging, Troward sought to demonstrate that the prophetic utterances in the Bible indicated that his readers were living in the End Times. However, Troward claimed that this apocalyptic period was not the end of the world, but the end of an age.