Poems: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Poems, credited to George Santayana, 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 Poems by George Santayana. Read in English by Larry Wilson; Algy Pug; Sharon Handy; kehayman; Guest; SkyAlbatross; monkeywraith; Freya Hansen; and Kane Mercer. George Santayana was born in Spain, educated in Boston and taught at Harvard before returning to Europe to spend the last forty years of his life writing. He is primarily known as a philosopher, his five-volume The Life of Reason being his magnus opus. But he also wrote a successful novel, The Last Puritan, as well as plays, essays and poetry. During his time at Harvard he influenced many of his student including T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost. Of these poems which he chose to collect together in this volume he says, "What I felt when I composed those verses could not have been rendered in any other form. Their sincerity is absolute, not only in respect to the thought which might be abstracted from them and expressed in prose, but also in respect to the aura of literary and religious associations which envelops them. . . . In one sense I think that my verses, mental and thin as their texture may be, represent a true inspiration, a true docility. . . . For as to the subject of these poems, it is simply my philosophy in the making." (From the Preface) The collection consists of fifty sonnets, a few odes an a selection of miscellaneous poems. The volume concludes with as essay about Santayana by poet and literary critic Edmund Gosse who says of Santayana's poetry, "Only in solitude can soliloquies be appreciated, and Mr. Santayana is not an author for loud streets..." Summary by Larry Wilson.

Recording facts

• Recording title: Poems
• Author credits: George Santayana
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 33
• Listed recording duration: 2:39:37

Catalogue topics

• poetry
• philosophy
• Spain
• sonnet
• ode

Opening tracks: first 24 of 33

1. 00 - Preface — 10:44
2. 01 - Sonnets 1883 -1893 1-5 — 4:51
3. 02 - Sonnets 6-10 — 4:50
4. 03 - Sonnets 11-15 — 4:44
5. 04 - Sonnets 16-20 — 4:54
6. 05 - Sonnets 1895 and after 21-25 — 5:05
7. 06 - Sonnets 26-30 — 5:10
8. 07 - Sonnets 31-35 — 4:54
9. 08 - Sonnets 36-40 — 4:55
10. 09 - Sonnets 41-45 — 4:55
11. 10 - Sonnets 46-50 — 4:54
12. 11 - Miscellaneous Sonnets (1-3) — 3:23
13. 12 - Miscellaneous Sonnets - to W.P. — 4:09
14. 13 - Miscellaneous Sonnets - Before a Statue of Achilles, The Rustic at the Play — 4:09
15. 14 - Odes 1-2 — 3:20
16. 15 - Ode 3 — 3:31
17. 16 - Odes 4-5 — 3:25
18. 17 - Athletic Ode — 6:31
19. 18 - Cape Cod — 2:15
20. 19 - A Toast — 1:36
21. 20 - Premonition — 1:58
22. 21 - Solipsism — 1:44
23. 22 - Sybaris — 4:19
24. 23 - Avila — 4:32

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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.