Double Sestina - Ye Goatherd Gods: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Double Sestina - Ye Goatherd Gods, credited to Sir Philip Sidney, 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 olunteers bring you 4 recordings of A Double Sestina - Ye Goatherd Gods by Phillip SidneyThis was the Fortnightly Poetry project for May 5, 2019. Read in English by William Allan Jones; Bruce Kachuk; Campbell Schelp / KevinS and Brian Dirkx. Poem is included in the book "Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia" Ye Goatherd Gods" depicts the sorrows of two shepherds who love the same woman. She has left them both, however, and the two shepherds are dejected and heartbroken. They appeal to the gods, to nature, and to the heavens in their angst, and everything they see is altered because of their sorrows. The poem is hyperbolic and highly emotional, with the two speakers engaged in a traditional pastoral singing match. Alternatively its stanzas are the lamentations of two broken hearted goatherds who pine after the goddess Urania, who was one of the nine Greek Muses, the muse of astronomy and Astrology. A sestina is a fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern with all six words appearing in the closing three-line envoi. The six key words in this poem are: mountaines vallies forrests musique morning and evening This is a DOUBLE sestina with 12 stanzas instead of 6. (Summary by William Jones)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Double Sestina - Ye Goatherd Gods
• Author credits: Sir Philip Sidney
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 4
• Listed recording duration: 23:15

Catalogue topics

• literastaure
• poetry
• sestina
• nature
• romance
• philosophy

Track guide

1. 01 - A Double Sestina - Read By WJ — 5:09
2. 02 - A Double Sestina - Read By BK — 6:31
3. 03 - A Double Sestina - Read By CS KS — 4:54
4. 04 - A Double Sestina - Read By BD — 6:41

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.