The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
Sunday Morning Poetry #1: To a Butterfly by William Wordsworth
A weekly reading and discussion of great poetry.
Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness By Alexander Pope
I AM his Highness’ dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, Sir, whose dog are you?
To A Butterfly
William Wordsworth
I'VE watched you now a full half-hour; Self-poised upon that yellow flower And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!--not frozen seas More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze Hath found you out among the trees, And calls you forth again!
This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister's flowers; Here rest your wings when they are weary; Here lodge as in a sanctuary!
Come often to us, fear no wrong;
Sit near us on the bough!
We'll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days, when we were young; Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now.
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STAY near me--do not take thy flight! A little longer stay in sight!
Much converse do I find in thee, Historian of my infancy!
Float near me; do not yet depart! Dead times revive in thee:
Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art! A solemn image to my heart,
My father's family!
Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days, The time, when, in our childish plays, My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!
A very hunter did I rush
Upon the prey:--with leaps and springs I followed on from brake to bush;
But she, God love her, feared to brush The dust from off its wings.
Wordsworth 1770 - 1850 Pope 1688- 1744