Uploaded January 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of the great Irish balladeer poet and entertainer Percy French reciting his much loved poem "The Four Farrellys"
In addition to his songs Percy French wrote poems, recitations and verse. Like his songs these usually related to his family, friends or acquaintances as well as his experiences and his moods.
William Percy French (1 May 1854 – 24 January 1920) was one of Ireland's foremost songwriters and entertainers in his day. In more recent times, he has become recognised for his watercolour paintings as well.
Here's a virtual movie of the great Irish balladeer poet and entertainer Percy French reciting his much loved poem "The Four Farrellys"
In addition to his songs Percy French wrote poems, recitations and verse. Like his songs these usually related to his family, friends or acquaintances as well as his experiences and his moods.
William Percy French (1 May 1854 – 24 January 1920) was one of Ireland's foremost songwriters and entertainers in his day. In more recent times, he has become recognised for his watercolour paintings as well.

![When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d - Walt Whitman - Poem - Animation
Heres the great Walt Whitman reading When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd is a long poem in the form of an elegy written by American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) in 1865. It is a 207-line poem written in free verse and employing many of the devices and conceits of the pastoral elegy. The poem was written in the Summer of 1865 during a period of profound national mourning in the aftermath of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. Despite the poem being an elegy to the fallen president, Whitman neither mentions Lincoln by name nor discusses the circumstances of his death. Instead, Whitman uses a series of rural and natural imagery including the symbols of the lilacs, a drooping star in the western sky (Venus), and the hermit thrush, and employs the traditional progression of the pastoral elegy in moving from grief toward an acceptance and knowledge of death. The poem also addresses the pity of war through imagery vaguely referencing the American Civil War (1861–1865) which ended only days before the assassination.
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd was written ten years after publishing the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855) and it reflects a maturing of Whitmans poetic vision from a drama of identity and romantic exuberance that has been tempered by his emotional experience of the American Civil War. Whitman included the poem as part of a quickly-written sequel to a collection of poems addressing the war that was being printed at the time of Lincolns death. These poems, collected under the title Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps, range in emotional context from excitement to woe, from distant observation to engagement, from belief to resignation and more concerned with history than the self, more aware of the precariousness of Americas present and future than of its expansive promise.[1] First published in Autumn 1865, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd—along with 42 other poems from Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum Taps—was absorbed into Leaves of Grass beginning with the fourth edition published in 1867.
Although Whitman did not consider the poem to be among his best works, it is compared in both effect and quality to several masterpieces of English literature, including elegies such as John Milton s Lycidas (1637) and Percy Bysshe Shelley s Adonais (1821).
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015 When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d - Walt Whitman - Poem - Animation](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Yznjn7C1WG4/mqdefault.jpg)






![She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways by Wordsworth - Poem animation
Heres a virtual movie of the great William Wordsworth reading his bittersweet poem She dwelt among the untrodden ways.
She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways is a three-stanza poem written by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth in 1798 when he was 28 years old. The verse was first printed in Lyrical Ballads, 1800, a volume of Wordsworths and Samuel Taylor Coleridges poems that marked a climacteric in the English Romantic movement. The poem is the best known of Wordsworths series of five works which comprise his Lucy series, and was a favourite amongst early readers.[1] It was composed both as a meditation on his own feelings of loneliness and loss, and as an ode to the beauty and dignity of an idealised woman who lived unnoticed by all others except by the poet himself. The title line implies Lucy lived unknown and remote, both physically and intellectually. The poets subjects isolated sensitivity expresses a characteristic aspect of Romantic expectations of the human, and especially of the poets, condition.
According to the literary critic Kenneth Ober, the poem describes the growth, perfection, and death of Lucy.[2] Whether Wordsworth has declared his love for her is left ambivalent, and even whether she had been aware of the poets affection is unsaid. However the poets feelings remain unrequited, and his final verse reveals that the subject of his affections has died alone. Lucys untrodden ways are symbolic to the poet of both her physical isolation and the unknown details of her mind and life. In the poem, Wordsworth is concerned not so much with his observation of Lucy, but with his experience when reflecting on her death.
Wordsworth wrote his series of Lucy poems during a stay with his sister Dorothy in Hamburg, Germany, between October 1798 and April 1801.[11] The real life identity of Lucy has never been identified, and it is probable that she was not modeled on any one historical person.[12] Wordsworth himself never addressed the matter of her persona,[11] and was reticent about commenting on the series.[1] Although a great detail is known of the circumstances and details of Wordsworths life, from the time he spend during of his stay in Germany comparatively little record survives. Only one known mention from the poet that references the series survives, and that mentions the series only, and not any of the individual verses.[13]
The literary historian Kenneth Johnson concluded that Lucy was created as the personification of Wordsworths muse,
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014 She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways by Wordsworth - Poem animation](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/b3erZuGSzWk/mqdefault.jpg)
![Walt Whitman Years of the modern Poem animation
Heres a virtual movie of the great Walt Whitman reading Years of the modern from his lifelong work Leaves of Grass.
WALT WHITMANS mission differed from that of other poets. The expression of lyrical beauty was not his aim, for his poetry lacks the background of legend, myth, euphemism or rhyme. He made no attempt to clarify ideas, but sought to bring the reader into the atmosphere of thought, leaving him there to pursue his own flight.
He dissected the mind of his race with the delicate fingers of a surgeon of souls. Fearlessly he attacked the cancerous growth of materialism, the worship of false idols, the superstitions of the churches, the separative tendency of creeds and sects, the despairing hold of the people on departed models of obedience and compulsion. He visioned the future in terms of solidarity, and it was to these prophetic years that he sang his songs. He penned his words for future minds and dedicated them to the Culminating Man, to the new Empire of Spiritual Manhood, built upon the foundation of Universal Brotherhood, without distinction of race, creed, caste or color.
Walt Whitmans poetry is a declaration of the principles which he felt would revolutionize the world if they were accepted and put into practice
Walter Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.[1] His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014
PLEASE NOTE - The image used in this animation is not actualy Walt Whitman it is a lookalike of Walt Whitman and is not to my knowledge a copyrighted image please write to me if you have bonafide information to the contrary. at my email address of hyperbolelad@hotmail.com Walt Whitman Years of the modern Poem animation](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/b7sOYam9iIY/mqdefault.jpg)
![A Song of Enchantment By Walter de la Mare Poem animation
Heres a virtual movie of a wonderful recital of of the mystical beautiful poem A Song of Enchantment By Walter de la Mare. Fans of certain British television soap opera may recognise the young and very beautiful demure face of June Brown who is still amazing now in her late 80s and full of life who I have used as the face of our virtual reader of this great poem.
Widdershins (sometimes withershins, widershins or widderschynnes) To go counter-clockwise, to go anti-clockwise, or to go lefthandwise, or to walk around an object by always keeping it on the left. i.e. literally, it means to take a course opposite the apparent motion of the sun viewed from the Arctic Circle, (given the centre of this imaginary clock, is the ground, the viewer stands upon).[1] The Oxford English Dictionarys entry cites the earliest uses of the word from 1513, where it was found in the phrase widdersyns start my hair, i.e. my hair stood on end.
The use of the word also means in a direction opposite to the usual, and in a direction contrary to the apparent course of the sun. It is cognate with the German language widersinnig, i.e., against + sense. The term widdershins was especially common in Lowland Scots.
Walter John de la Mare, OM, CH (/ˈdɛləˌmɛər/;[1] 25 April 1873 22 June 1956) was an English poet, short story writer and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children and for his poem The Listeners. He also wrote some subtle psychological horror stories, amongst them Seatons Aunt and Out of the Deep. His 1921 novel Memoirs of a Midget won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction[2] and his post-war Collected Stories for Children won the 1947 Carnegie Medal for British childrens books
June Muriel Brown, MBE (born 16 February 1927) is a three time British Soap Award British actress, best known for her role as Dot Cotton in the long-running BBC soap opera EastEnders, and for making other high profile television appearances on shows such as Doctor Who, Coronation Street, Minder, The Bill and The Sweeney.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014 A Song of Enchantment By Walter de la Mare Poem animation](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bFzAGyVBe8A/mqdefault.jpg)