Uploaded April 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of the great Edgar Allan Poe reading his much loved poem "Annabel Lee"
"Annabel Lee" is the last complete poem composed by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe's poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are envious. He retains his love for her even after her death. There has been debate over who, if anyone, was the inspiration for "Annabel Lee". Though many women have been suggested, Poe's wife Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe is one of the more credible candidates. Written in 1849, it was not published until shortly after Poe's death that same year.
Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 -- October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.[2]
Born in Boston, he was the second child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia. Although they never formally adopted him, Poe was with them well into young adulthood. Tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Poe attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name. It was at this time his publishing career began, albeit humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian". With the death of Frances Allan in 1829, Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement. Later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point and declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, Poe parted ways with John Allan.
Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845 Poe published his poem, "The Raven", to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. For years, he had been planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.[3]
Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014
Here's a virtual movie of the great Edgar Allan Poe reading his much loved poem "Annabel Lee"
"Annabel Lee" is the last complete poem composed by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe's poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are envious. He retains his love for her even after her death. There has been debate over who, if anyone, was the inspiration for "Annabel Lee". Though many women have been suggested, Poe's wife Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe is one of the more credible candidates. Written in 1849, it was not published until shortly after Poe's death that same year.
Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 -- October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.[2]
Born in Boston, he was the second child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia. Although they never formally adopted him, Poe was with them well into young adulthood. Tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Poe attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name. It was at this time his publishing career began, albeit humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian". With the death of Frances Allan in 1829, Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement. Later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point and declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, Poe parted ways with John Allan.
Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845 Poe published his poem, "The Raven", to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. For years, he had been planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.[3]
Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014

![To The Shirker A Last Appeal - Owen Seaman - Poem - Animation - WW1
Heres a virtual movie the British poet Owen Seaman reading his patriotic World War 1 poem To The Shirker A Last Appeal It was perhaps lucky for Owen Seaman that he himself was too old to respond to the patriotic claptrap that his rather good poem espouses or he may have ended up one of the millions of dead. The Poem was used in a recruiting poster published by The Punch Magazine.
Sir Owen Seaman, 1st Baronet (18 September 1861 – 2 February 1936) was a British writer, journalist and poet. He is best known as editor of Punch, from 1906 to 1932.
Born in Shrewsbury, he was the only son of William Mantle Seaman and Sarah Ann Balls. He distinguished himself academically both at Shrewsbury School and later Clare College, Cambridge.[1] Following this, he worked as a schoolmaster at Rossall School (1884) and Magdalen College School, Oxford (1887-8),[2] professor of literature at Durham College of Science, Newcastle upon Tyne (1890–1903), and became a barrister of the Inner Temple in 1897.[3]
Seamans first successful submission to the satirical and humorous magazine Punch was Rhyme of the Kipperling, an 1894 parody of Rudyard Kipling. The same year he published a full volume of parodies entitled Horace at Cambridge.[4] After several years of submitting work which showed a remarkable gift for the composition of light verse,[3] he was invited to join the staff in 1897, becoming assistant editor in 1902 and finally editor in 1906. It was during his tenure there that A. A. Milne, author of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, worked as his assistant; it is thought that Seamans dour disposition may have been the inspiration behind the gloomy character of Eeyore.[4]
In 1914 he was knighted, more likely for his creativity than for his patriotism, which saw fuller bloom in the course of World War I. During the war, he wrote number of verses of a somewhat mindless, patriotic kind, reflecting the optimism and devotion to his native land rather than the stirrings of poetic genius, as anthologist John M. Munro put it.[5] In 1915, he published War Time, a book of poetry that Munro described as a mixture of satiric verse and patriotic doggerel. Nevertheless, in 1933, he was created a baronet, of Bouverie Street in the City of London. Sir Owen never married, and died in 1936. He is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014 To The Shirker A Last Appeal - Owen Seaman - Poem - Animation - WW1](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/x5TKtGjQdPg/mqdefault.jpg)
![If By Rudyard Kipling Poem animation
Heres a virtual movie of the great Rudyard Kipling reading his best loved poem If If— is a poem written in 1895[1] by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the Brother Square Toes chapter of Rewards and Fairies, Kiplings 1910 collection of short stories and poems. Like William Ernest Henleys Invictus, it is a memorable evocation of Victorian stoicism and the stiff upper lip that popular culture has made into a traditional British virtue. Its status is confirmed both by the number of parodies it has inspired, and by the widespread popularity it still enjoys amongst Britons. It is often voted Britains favourite poem.[2][3] The poems lines, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same is written on the wall of the Centre Court players entrance at the British tennis tournament, Wimbledon, and the entire poem was read in a promotional video for the Wimbledon 2008 gentlemans final by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.[4][5][6]
According to Kipling in his autobiography Something of Myself, posthumously published in 1937, the poem was inspired by Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, who in 1895 led a raid by British forces against the Boers in South Africa, subsequently called the Jameson Raid.[7] This defeat increased the tensions that ultimately led to the Second Boer War. The British press, however, portrayed Jameson as a hero in the middle of the disaster, and the actual defeat as a British victory.
The well-known Indian historian and writer Khushwant Singh claims that Kiplings If is the essence of the message of The Gita in English..[8] The text Singh refers to is the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient Indian scripture. Kipling himself noted in Something of Myself that the poem had been printed as cards to hang up in offices and bedrooms; illuminated text-wise and anthologized to weariness.If— has been translated into many languages.
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 18 January 1936)[1] was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was born in Bombay, British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old.[2] Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (1894) (a collection of stories which includes Rikki-Tikki-Tavi), Kim (1901) (a tale of adventure), many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King (1888); and his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), and If— (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story;[3] his childrens books are enduring classics of childrens literature; and his best works are said to exhibit a versatile and luminous narrative gift.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014
IF.....
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, dont deal in lies,
Or being hated, dont give way to hating,
And yet dont look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth youve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: Hold on!
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything thats in it,
And - which is more - youll be a Man, my son! If By Rudyard Kipling Poem animation](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xJNz9eve1Ec/mqdefault.jpg)
![William Shakespeare - Tomorrow, - Michael Redgrave - Poem Animation
Heres a virtual movie of the great actor Sir Micheal Redgrave Reciting Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow From Macbeth.
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave CBE (20 March 1908 – 21 March 1985) was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author. His father was George Ellsworthy Roy Redgrave (26 April 1873 – 25 May 1922) was an English stage and silent film actor. Redgrave is considered to be the first member of the Redgrave acting dynasty.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow is the beginning of the second sentence of one of the most famous soliloquies in Shakespeares tragedy Macbeth. It takes place in the beginning of the 5th scene of Act 5, during the time when the English troops, led by Malcolm and Macduff, are approaching Macbeths castle to besiege it. Macbeth, the plays protagonist, is confident that he can withstand any siege from Malcolms forces. He hears the cry of a woman and reflects that there was a time when his hair would have stood on end if he had heard such a cry, but he is now so full of horrors and slaughterous thoughts that it can no longer startle him.
Seton then tells Macbeth of Lady Macbeths death, and Macbeth delivers this soliloquy as his response to the news.[1] Shortly afterwards he is told of the apparent movement of Birnam Wood towards Dunsinane Castle (as the witches previously prophesied to him), which is actually Malcolms forces having disguised themselves with tree branches so as to disguise their numbers as they approach the castle. This sets the scene for the final events of the play and Macbeths death at the hands of Macduff.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...
(from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth)
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2016 William Shakespeare - Tomorrow, - Michael Redgrave - Poem Animation](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xRpK4z_FmDU/mqdefault.jpg)






![Pro Patria - Owen Seaman - WW1 - Poem - Animation
Heres a virtual movie of the English Poet Owen Seaman reading perhaps his most famous poem Pro Patria This is another of his patriotic recruiting poems designed to encourage men to join the military. Luckily for the poet himself he was too old to throw his life away by joining the slaughter of the Great War. Wilfred Owen wrote an antithesis to this poem had a very different view of war at the time than Owen Seaman. Wilfred Owen had actually been in the war and saw the horrific deaths and pain involved in it. He was very disgusted with the writers that were pro-war, people that had been writing about the war that had not experienced what he and millions of others had been thrust into,and were simply basing there patriotic outpourings on what they had been fed by the propaganda machine with no real knowledge.Owen was infuriated because he believed that it was unrealistic for people to be glorifying a war that they knew nothing about it and its consequences . One of the lines in Pro Patria, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori translates into English from the Latin as It is sweet and proper to die for ones country This same line is in the poem Dulce et Decorum Est. This writing is more anti-war than pro-war. It talks about living instead of dying for your country and proposes the following question. Would it not be better to live for your country and honor it, than die trying? Maybe dying for your country is not as satisfying as living for it because after all, once your dead, what does it matter how you died?
Sir Owen Seaman, 1st Baronet (18 September 1861 – 2 February 1936) was a British writer, journalist and poet. He is best known as editor of Punch, from 1906 to 1932.
Born in Shrewsbury, he was the only son of William Mantle Seaman and Sarah Ann Balls. He distinguished himself academically both at Shrewsbury School and later Clare College, Cambridge.[1] Following this, he worked as a schoolmaster at Rossall School (1884) and Magdalen College School, Oxford (1887-8),[2] professor of literature at Durham College of Science, Newcastle upon Tyne (1890–1903), and became a barrister of the Inner Temple in 1897.[3]
Seamans first successful submission to the satirical and humorous magazine Punch was Rhyme of the Kipperling, an 1894 parody of Rudyard Kipling. The same year he published a full volume of parodies entitled Horace at Cambridge.[4] After several years of submitting work which showed a remarkable gift for the composition of light verse,[3] he was invited to join the staff in 1897, becoming assistant editor in 1902 and finally editor in 1906. It was during his tenure there that A. A. Milne, author of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, worked as his assistant; it is thought that Seamans dour disposition may have been the inspiration behind the gloomy character of Eeyore.[4]
In 1914 he was knighted, more likely for his creativity than for his patriotism, which saw fuller bloom in the course of World War I. During the war, he wrote number of verses of a somewhat mindless, patriotic kind, reflecting the optimism and devotion to his native land rather than the stirrings of poetic genius, as anthologist John M. Munro put it.[5] In 1915, he published War Time, a book of poetry that Munro described as a mixture of satiric verse and patriotic doggerel. Nevertheless, in 1933, he was created a baronet, of Bouverie Street in the City of London. Sir Owen never married, and died in 1936. He is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014 Pro Patria - Owen Seaman - WW1 - Poem - Animation](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zqUFCXQ3BKo/mqdefault.jpg)