Uploaded June 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of Charles Graves poet and brother of Robert Graves reading Five of his original Poems. Fear in the Night - Girl Asleep - The Hoer - The Usurper - The Ghost.
Charles Ranke Patrick Graves (1 December 1899 – 21 February 1971) was a journalist and writer, and brother of Robert Graves.
He was born in Wimbledon, England. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves (born in Dublin, 22 July 1846) who was a poet of high standing, writing many charming poems and ballads. His mother was Amalie (Amy) Elizabeth Sophie (or Sophia) von Ranke.[1]
He worked on the Sunday Express, Daily Mail and many other newspapers. He published 46 books in all including the Thin Blue Line or Adventures in the RAF. He also wrote a continuation (more than a sequel) called "The Avengers." His hobbies were golf and gin rummy.
Two of his books are of special interest, his Ireland Revisited (1949) and his autobiography The Bad Old Days (1951). In Ireland Revisited he takes the reader on an informative and humorous tour of Ireland.
He begins his autobiography:
"Those were the days, the Bad Old Days – primarily of large families, but also of could look the dollar in the eye without flinching or wincing, when cigarettes were 11d. for 20 and beef was unrationed and champagne was 5s. a bottle."
and he concludes it as follows:
"What is happiness? I did not yet know. But I had already learnt that to have any chance of success in life one must be able to ‘take it’; that tact can be worth all the genius in the world; that unless you specialise you will never make more than £800 a year; that it is madness to disbelieve in luck and the cycles of luck; that you have to spend money to make money; that you must at all costs keep your youthful enthusiasms; that the two greatest influences in a man’s life are his mother and his wife; that marriage will either make you or break you, because it can never leave you the same."
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015
Here's a virtual movie of Charles Graves poet and brother of Robert Graves reading Five of his original Poems. Fear in the Night - Girl Asleep - The Hoer - The Usurper - The Ghost.
Charles Ranke Patrick Graves (1 December 1899 – 21 February 1971) was a journalist and writer, and brother of Robert Graves.
He was born in Wimbledon, England. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves (born in Dublin, 22 July 1846) who was a poet of high standing, writing many charming poems and ballads. His mother was Amalie (Amy) Elizabeth Sophie (or Sophia) von Ranke.[1]
He worked on the Sunday Express, Daily Mail and many other newspapers. He published 46 books in all including the Thin Blue Line or Adventures in the RAF. He also wrote a continuation (more than a sequel) called "The Avengers." His hobbies were golf and gin rummy.
Two of his books are of special interest, his Ireland Revisited (1949) and his autobiography The Bad Old Days (1951). In Ireland Revisited he takes the reader on an informative and humorous tour of Ireland.
He begins his autobiography:
"Those were the days, the Bad Old Days – primarily of large families, but also of could look the dollar in the eye without flinching or wincing, when cigarettes were 11d. for 20 and beef was unrationed and champagne was 5s. a bottle."
and he concludes it as follows:
"What is happiness? I did not yet know. But I had already learnt that to have any chance of success in life one must be able to ‘take it’; that tact can be worth all the genius in the world; that unless you specialise you will never make more than £800 a year; that it is madness to disbelieve in luck and the cycles of luck; that you have to spend money to make money; that you must at all costs keep your youthful enthusiasms; that the two greatest influences in a man’s life are his mother and his wife; that marriage will either make you or break you, because it can never leave you the same."
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015
![I know a planet - The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Poem - animation
Heres a virtual movie of a reading from The Little Prince by the great Antoine de Saint-Exupéry I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman For the purposes of this animation I have used the beautiful face of the authors wife Consuelo de Saint Exupéry.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (French: [ɑ̃twan də sɛ̃tɛɡzypeʁi]), officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry[3][4][Note 1][Note 2] (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944) was a French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of several of Frances highest literary awards and also won the U.S. National Book Award.[7] He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight.
Consuelo de Saint Exupéry, officially Consuelo Suncín, comtesse de Saint Exupéry, (born Armenia, El Salvador on 10 April 1901; died Grasse, France on 18 May 1979) was a Salvadoran-French writer and artist, and the wife of the French aristocrat, writer and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944).
The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince; French pronunciation: [lə.pə.tiˈpʁɛ̃s]), first published in 1943, is a novella and the most famous work of the French aristocrat, writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944).
The novella is both the most-read and most-translated book in the French language, and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France. Translated into more than 250 languages and dialects (as well as braille),[3][4] selling nearly two million copies annually with sales totalling over 140 million copies worldwide,[5] it has become one of the best-selling books ever published.
The Little Prince is a poetic tale, with watercolour illustrations by the author, in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince fallen to Earth from a tiny asteroid. The story is philosophical and includes social criticism, remarking on the strangeness of the adult world. It was written during a period when Saint-Exupéry fled to North America subsequent to the Fall of France during the Second World War, witnessed first hand by the author and captured in his memoir Flight to Arras.[11] The adult fable, according to one review, is actually ...an allegory of Saint-Exupérys own life—his search for childhood certainties and interior peace, his mysticism, his belief in human courage and brotherhood.... but also an allusion to the tortured nature of their relationship.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on tghis video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015 I know a planet - The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Poem - animation](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/I2svPb7X1a8/mqdefault.jpg)

![The Tyger - William Blake - Poem - Animation
Heres a virtual movie of William Blake reading his much loved Poem The Tyger The soundtrack used on this video is from a rare 78 rpm shellac record recited by Clifford Turner.
Clifford Turner delivers the Poem somewhat in the style of a preacher delivering a sermon.Very few people would ever have seen a Tiger in the flesh in Blakes Time and most people of the time in Britain would have considered such a creature depicted only by art works as a devilish creature of Myth. To me Turner is the nearest I have ever heard ,and I have most of the significant recordings of recitals of this poem in my collection to how I imagine Blake may have sounded reciting his poem.
J. Clifford Turner was a leading voice teacher who gained his experience at RADA.
The Tyger is a poem by the English poet William Blake published in 1794 as part of the Songs of Experience collection. Literary critic Alfred Kazin calls it the most famous of his poems,[1] and The Cambridge Companion to William Blake says it is the most anthologized poem in English.[2] It is one of Blakes most reinterpreted and arranged works.
he Songs of Experience was published in 1794 as a follow up to Blakes 1789 Songs of Innocence.[4] The two books were published together under the merged title Songs of Innocence and Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul: the author and printer, W. Blake[4] featuring 54 plates. The illustrations are arranged differently in some copies, while a number of poems were moved from Songs of Innocence to Songs of Experience. Blake continued to print the work throughout his life.[5] Of the copies of the original collection, only 28 published during his life are known to exist, with an additional 16 published posthumously.[6] Only 5 of the poems from Songs of Experience appeared individually before 1839.The Tyger,
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![The Second Coming - William Butler Yeats - Poem - Animation
Heres the great William Butler Yeats reading his much loved highly religiously charged but essentialy metaphysical poem The Second Coming.The Second Coming is a poem composed by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920, and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and second coming allegorically to describe the atmosphere of post-war Europe.[1] The poem is considered a major work of Modernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and was at first entitled The Second Birth.
The Second Coming contains some of English language literatures most potent images of the twentieth century and those which have been tied most closely to Yeatss legacy.
Modernists read the poem as a dirge for the decline of European civilisation in the mode of Eliot, but later critics have pointed out that it expresses Yeatss apocalyptic mystical theories, and is thus the expression of a mind shaped by the 1890s. His most important collections of poetry started with The Green Helmet (1910) and Responsibilities (1914). In imagery, Yeatss poetry became sparer and more powerful as he grew older. The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair (1929), and New Poems (1938) contained some of the most potent images in twentieth-century poetry.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
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![My Boy Jack - Rudyard Kipling WW1 - Poem - Animation
Heres a virtual movie of the great Rudyard Kipling reading My Boy Jack Which he wrote after recieving the heartbreaking news that his only son had been killed in action in the Battle of Loos in September 1915.
My Boy Jack is a 1915 poem by Rudyard Kipling. Although Kipling wrote it after his beloved son John (called Jack) an 18 year old Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards went missing in September 1915 during the Battle of Loos, during World War I, it was published as a prelude to a story in his book Sea Warfare written about the Battle of Jutland in 1916.[1] The imagery and theme is maritime in nature and as such it is about a generic nautical Jack (or Jack Tar), though emotionally affected by the death of Kiplings son.
John Jack Kipling (17 August 1897 - 27 September 1915) was the only son of the British author Rudyard Kipling. He was killed at the Battle of Loos while serving with the British Army during the First World War, a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday.
The Battle of Loos was the largest British offensive mounted in 1915 on the Western Front during World War I. The first British use of poison gas occurred and the battle was the first mass engagement of New Army units. The British offensive was part of the attempt by the French to break through the German defences in Artois and Champagne and restore a war of movement. Despite improved methods, more ammunition and better equipment the Franco-British attacks were contained by the German armies, except for local losses of ground. Casualties in the Herbstschlacht (Autumn Battle) were high on both sides.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
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![The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe - Poem - Animation
Heres a virtual movie of the great Edgar Allan Poe reading his most famous and much loved poem The Raven
This video suggests that Poe may not have been the actual author of this great poem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgoGmZaV5-w&feature=youtu.be
The Raven is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking ravens mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the mans slow fall into madness. The lover, often identified as being a student,[1][2] is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further instigate his distress with its constant repetition of the word Nevermore. The poem makes use of a number of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.
Poe claimed to have written the poem very logically and methodically, intending to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, The Philosophy of Composition. The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens.[3] Poe borrows the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barretts poem Lady Geraldines Courtship, and makes use of internal rhyme as well as alliteration throughout.
The Raven was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. Its publication made Poe widely popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success. The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Critical opinion is divided as to the poems literary status, but it nevertheless remains one of the most famous poems ever written.
The Raven follows an unnamed narrator on a dreary night in December who sits reading forgotten lore by a dying fire [6] as a way to forget the death of his beloved Lenore. A rapping at [his] chamber door[6] reveals nothing, but excites his soul to burning.[7] The rapping is repeated, slightly louder, and he realizes it is coming from his window. When he goes to investigate, a raven flutters into his chamber. Paying no attention to the man, the raven perches on a bust of Pallas above the door.
Amused by the ravens comically serious disposition, the man asks that the bird tell him its name. The ravens only answer is Nevermore.[7] The narrator is surprised that the raven can talk, though at this point it has said nothing further. The narrator remarks to himself that his friend the raven will soon fly out of his life, just as other friends have flown before[7] along with his previous hopes. As if answering, the raven responds again with Nevermore.[7] The narrator reasons that the bird learned the word Nevermore from some unhappy master and that it is the only word it knows.[7]
Even so, the narrator pulls his chair directly in front of the raven, determined to learn more about it. He thinks for a moment in silence, and his mind wanders back to his lost Lenore. He thinks the air grows denser and feels the presence of angels, and wonders if God is sending him a sign that he is to forget Lenore. The bird again replies in the negative, suggesting that he can never be free of his memories. The narrator becomes angry, calling the raven a thing of evil and a prophet.[8] Finally, he asks the raven whether he will be reunited with Lenore in Heaven. When the raven responds with its typical Nevermore, he is enraged, and, calling it a liar, commands the bird to return to the Plutonian shore,[8]—but it does not move. Presumably at the time of the poems recitation by the narrator, the raven still is sitting[8] on the bust of Pallas. The narrators final admission is that his soul is trapped beneath the ravens shadow and shall be lifted Nevermor.
Edgar Allan Poe (/poʊ/; 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.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
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![The Mockery of Life -, by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt - Poem animation
Heres the Victorian English Romantic poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt reading his exquisite despairing bittersweet poem The Mockery of Life first published in 1881.This definitve if somewhat under recorded recital comes from fellow youtuber Ceminon
https://www.youtube.com/user/Ceminon/about
Blunt was in my opinion one of the finest Victorian writers of elegant romantic poetry these days he is regarded by many as rather old fashioned and has become qiute overlooked his genteel idolisation of the female is perhaps to many out of place in the world today where the sexes are deemed in all respects to be equal ,but his poetry deserves to be appreciated more for its sheer genteel olde worlde elegance as the stuff of pure romance.
The Mockery of Life
1God! What a mockery is this life of ours!
2Cast forth in blood and pain from our mothers womb,
3Most like an excrement, and weeping showers
4Of senseless tears: unreasoning, naked, dumb,
5The symbol of all weakness and the sum:
6Our very life a sufferance. Presently,
7Grown stronger, we must fight for standing-room
8Upon the earth, and the bare liberty
9To breathe and move. We crave the right to toil.
10We push, we strive, we jostle with the rest.
11We learn new courage, stifle our old fears,
12Stand with stiff backs, take part in every broil.
13It may be that we love, that we are blest.
14It may be, for a little space of years,
15We conquer fate and half forget our tears.
16And then fate strikes us. First our joys decay.
17Youth, with its pleasures, is a tale soon told.
18We grow a little poorer day by day.
19Old friendships falter. Loves grow strangely cold.
20In vain we shift our hearts to a new hold
21And barter joy for joy, the less for less.
22We doubt our strength, our wisdom, and our gold.
23We stand alone, as in a wilderness
24Of doubts and terrors. Then, if we be wise,
25We make our terms with fate and, while we may,
26Sell our lifes last sad remnant for a hope.
27And it is wisdom thus to close our eyes.
28But for the foolish, those who cannot pray,
29What else remains of their dark horoscope
30But a tall tree and courage and a rope?
31And who shall tell what ignominy death
32Has yet in store for us; what abject fears
33Even for the best of us; what fights for breath;
34What sobs, what supplications, what wild tears;
35What impotence of soul against despairs
36Which blot out reason? The last trembling thought
37Of each poor brain, as dissolution nears,
38Is not of fair life lost, of Heaven bought
39And glory won. Tis not the thought of grief;
40Of friends deserted; loving hearts which bleed;
41Wives, sisters, children who around us weep.
42But only a mad clutching for relief
43From physical pain, importunate Natures need;
44The search as for a womb where we may creep
45Back from the world, to hide, perhaps to sleep.
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (17 August 1840[1] 10 September 1922[2]) (Sometimes spelled Wilfred) was an English poet and writer. He was born at Petworth House in Sussex, and served in the Diplomatic Service from 1858 to 1869. He was raised in the faith of his mother, a Catholic convert, and educated at Twyford School, Stonyhurst, and at St Marys College, Oscott. He was best known for his poetry, which was published in a collected edition in 1914, but also wrote a number of political essays and polemics. Blunt is also known for his relatively enlightened views on imperialism:
His most memorable line of poetry on the subject comes from Satan Absolved (1899), where a cynical devil explains to the Almighty that, The white mans burden, Lord, is the burden of his cash (Poetical Works, 2.254). Blunt thus stands Rudyard Kiplings familiar concept on its head, arguing that the imperialists burden is not their moral responsibility for the colonized peoples, but their urge to make money out of them. - Elizabeth Longford, .
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
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