Each week a poem is chosen to be recorded by as many Librivox volunteers as possible!
This week's selection is an Irish poem for St. Patrick's Day, The Song of Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats. This is Yeats in his faerie folklore vein, and he paints an evocative picture of a beautiful brush with the supernatural. It's so easy to imagine this poem as a Pre-Raphaelite painting!
The Wikipedia page on the author: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats
The text of the poem is available at Bartleby ( http://www.bartleby.com/146/9.html ), or below:
At the beginning, read the abbreviated "librivox disclaimer":The Song of Wandering Aengus
by William Butler Yeats
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
The Song of Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats, read for librivox.org by [your name]" or some variation on that, adding date, location, your personal url, and/or "for St. Patrick's Day 2006," if you wish.
At the End say: End of poem.
Save your recording as an mp3 file using the following filename and ID3 tag format:
File name ? all in lowercase: wandering_aengus_yeats_[your initials].mp3
ID-3 tags:
Title: The Song of Wandering Aengus - Read by [your initials]
Artist: William Butler Yeats
Album: LibriVox Weekly Poetry
Genre: Please set to "Speech" if possible
Comments: optionally, you may put in the comments things like "Read by [your name]," your personal URL, Librivox's URL, Public Domain, etc.
Please be sure that your recording software is set to the following technical specifications:
Bit Rate: 128 kbps
Sample Rate: 44100 kHzs
You may either post a link to your completed files here in the thread or email them to me via http://www.yousendit.com/ at this address: foxinthestars AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk. If you use yousendit, it is also a good idea to post the link it generates in this thread as well.
When you post your link, please include your name as you would like it credited on the catalog page and any URL by which you would like it accompanied, if you are not already in the wiki: http://librivox.org/wiki/moin.cgi/ListOfReadersCatalogNames
If you wish to contribute, please have your readings submitted by 3:00 p.m. PST on Saturday, March 18th (that's 23.00 gmt, on the same day).
Enjoy!
(And remember, anyone who submits a recording can choose the next weekly poem! If you'd like to suggest a poem or coordinate a future Weekly Poetry project, please visit this thread: http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1114)
