Amazon Classical Music Links

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chopin-Violin-Manoukian-Fryderyk/dp/B00000IOAU
http://www.amazon.co.uk/99-Must-Have-Piano-Masterpieces/dp/B005CVCR0I

To Watch

Isabella Rossini - Odyssey film

Poetry

Cadmus and Harmonia - Matthew Arnold

O Tell Me The Truth About Love - Auden - http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/o-tell-me-the-truth-about-love/

London - William Blake - http://www.tate.org.uk/learning/worksinfocus/blake/works/songs_08.html - http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/william-blake-london/1385.html
The Clod and The Pebble -  Blake
The Garden Of Love -  Blake  http://www.tate.org.uk/learning/worksinfocus/blake/works/songs_07.html - http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/william-blake-the-garden-of-love/1563.html
A Poison Tree - Blake - http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/william-blake-a-poison-tree/1387.html -'Repressed anger can kill, once it's let out' - Liz Lockhead
The Lamb and The Tyger - http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/william-blake-the-tyger-and-the-lamb/1389.html
Infant Joy and Infant Sorrow - Blake - http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/william-blake-infant-joy-and-infant-sorrow/1564.html - http://www.blakesongsettings.co.uk/index.php/the-poems/65-infant-joy-and-infant-sorrow

How Fortunate the Man With None - Berthold Brecht (also a song by Dead Can Dance)
The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe
La Belle Dame Sans Merci (The Beautiful Lady Without Pity) - John Keats

The Day The Saucers Came - Neil Gaiman
Be Near Me When My Light Is Low - Tennyson
Lady Clare - Alfred Lord Tennyson
Annabel Lee - Edgar Allan Poe
A Cursory Nursery Tale - Ogden Nash
The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus - Ogden Nash
The Martyr - Herman Melville
Learning to Wait - Richard Church
All the World's A Stage - As You Like It - Act 2, Scene 7 - Shakespeare
Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds ) - Shakespeare - http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/sonnets/116.htm
Shakespeare Sonnet 17: Who Will Believe In My Verse In Time To Come - http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/sonnets/17.htm - http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/17
Sonnet: England in 1819 - Keats
Oh! Death Will Find Me, Long Before I Tire - http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2002/05/oh-death-will-find-me-long-before-i.html
One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand (Amoretti LXXV) -- Edmund Spenser -http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2006/03/one-day-i-wrote-her-name-upon-strand.html
The Elephant is Slow to Mate - DH Lawrence




Wilfred Owen

The Parable Of the Old Man and the Young - http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2002/01/parable-of-old-man-and-young-wilfred.html

Strange Meeting - Wilfred Owen -  http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2000/01/strange-meeting-wilfred-owen.html - http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/wilfred-owen-strange-meeting-poem-only/1254.html

Anthem For Doomed Youth - http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poems/anthem_for_doomed_youth.shtml -

http://www.wilfredowen.org.uk/poetry/anthem-for-doomed-youth

The Sentry - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPu8fLFeWPQ

Dulce et Decorum Est - http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/jeremy-paxman-on-wilfred-owen/8673.html


Rosetti
Where are the snows of yesteryear (translation of Francois Villon) - http://www.projetbrassens.eclipse.co.uk/pages/transballade.html



William Wordsworth

Upon Westminster Bridge - http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/william-wordsworth-upon-westminster-bridge-poem-only/8684.html - http://www.bartleby.com/101/520.html - http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/poetrywordsworth/1wordsworth_westsubjectrev2.shtml

Into my heart on air that kills - A E Housmann

Stephen Fry on Homophobia

"Most homophobia has absolutely nothing to do with sex. Buggery is far less Prevalent in the gay world than people suppose. Anal Sex is probably not much more common in homosexual encounters than it is in heterosexual. Buggery is not at the end of the yellow brick road somewhere over the homosexual rainbow. 'Tis not the prise, the purpose, the goal or the fulfilment of homosexual encounters. Buggery is not the achievement which sees homosexuality moving from becoming into being. Buggery is not homosexuality's realisation or destiny. Buggery is as much a necessary condition of homosexuality as the ownership of a Volvo estate car is a necessary condition of middle class family life linked irretrievable only in the minds of the witless and the cheap. The performance of buggery is no more inevitable a part of homosexuality than an orange syllabub is an inevitable part of a dinner. Some may clamour for it and instantly demand a second helping. Some are not interested. Some will decide that they will try it once and then instantly vomit. There are plenty of other things to be got up to inside the homosexual world outside the orbit of the anal ring. But the concept that really gets the goat of the gay hater, the idea that really spins their melon and sickens their stomach is that most terrible and terrifying of all human notions: LOVE. That one can love another of the same gender. That is what the homophobe really cannot stand.”  

The Cult of Beauty: Exploring The Aesthetic Movement

'Oscar Wilde was really the pin-up boy for the aesthetic movement'

http://www.vam.ac.uk/channel/people/art1/the_cult_of_beauty/

Elizabeth Siddal, 1854 painting by Rossetti

Veronica Veronese painting - Rosetti 1872

Walt Witman quote

"I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth."

Thomas Paine quote on Panic

'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [sic (actually the fifteenth)] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.

Source - iwise.com  http://www.iwise.com/ptagp

link from Tomasky article  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/05/obama-and-republicans-headed-for-a-constitutional-crisis-over-debt.html-

Robert Burns Poetry

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/learning/bitesize/higher/english/poetry/burns_rev3.shtml - To A Mouse - Read By Richard Wilson

'The best laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,' - To A Mouse quote