A Selection of Divine Poems: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

A Selection of Divine Poems, credited to John Donne, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

Librivox recording of A Selection of Divine Poems by John Donne. Read by Nathan. John Donne was an English Jacobean preacher, sometime lawyer, later in life a Member of Parliament and Royal Chaplain. Marrying for love against the wishes of his influential father-in-law; Donne's career was cast into shadow: forcing him to support his wife, Anne, as best he might under a specter of unforgiving penury. Despite such hardships - perhaps because of them - Donne's writings demonstrate a mastery of poetry layered with metaphysical meaning and mystery: which continues to delight and challenge modern-day readers. Donne's "divine poems" - the focus of this collection - present profound theological insights using absorbing allegories and beautiful imagery. At the end of Donne's life - as his health deteriorated under illnesses of increasing severity - his poetry served him as: distraction, consolation, and even "public confession". With them, Donne cheerfully but soberly faces the limits of his own mortality: and contemplates the mysteries that lie beyond the grave. (Introduction by Godsend)

Recording facts

• Recording title: A Selection of Divine Poems
• Author credits: John Donne
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 5
• Listed recording duration: 48:33

Catalogue topics

• poetry
• religion
• John Donne
• Selection of Divine Poems
• Holy Sonnets
• Divine Meditations
• Divine Sonnets
• La Corona

Track guide

1. 01 - La Corona (The Cycle of 'The Crown') — 7:01
2. 02 - Holy Sonnets I to XIX (aka 'The Divine Meditations') — 18:02
3. 03 - The Cross — 4:19
4. 04 - Resurrection, Imperfect (or incomplete) — 1:57
5. 05 - The Litany — 17:39

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.