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The Poetry of Dogs
Some of Histories Greatest Poets Give Us Fascinating Insights on Man's Best Friend
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Narrated by:
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Laurel Lefkow
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Nigel Planer
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Richard Mitchley
About this listen
Man’s best friend. An always faithful ally.
Whether the dog is domesticated as a pet and there to enjoy life with a family or as a work-dog herding sheep, helping to hunt, police or guard, the dog has proved time and time again to have many invaluable uses.
They come in all shapes and sizes from sought after breeds to lowly mongrels each with an array of qualities that give them distinct personalities.
From earliest times dogs have been able to find a unique place fulfilling the needs of their keepers and often there is equal devotion from master to servant. A dog’s life no longer has to have negative connotations as so many pooches are loved, extravagantly fed, groomed, petted and pawed over, all perhaps more than our fellow man.
Dogs were even worshipped as deities in Mesopotamian times and across several cultures and civilisations including Hindu, Chinese and Greek, they are the helpers, the watchers or guardians of sacred or sensitive sites.
Between then and now poets have written verse, both serious and humorous, in attempts to keep a poetic track both of feelings and as a tribute to our four-legged friends and their adventures.
1 - The Poetry of Dogs - An Introduction
2 - "A Friendly Welcome" by Lord Byron
3 - "A Popular Personage at Home" by Thomas Hardy
4 - "The Power of the Dog" by Rudyard Kiping
5 - "Verse for a Certain Dog" by Dorothy Parker
6 - "The Best Friend" by Meribah Abbott
7 - "The Joy of a Dog" by Edgar Albert Guest
8 - "Dog" by Harold Munro
9 - "My Comforter" by Anonymous
10 - "Four Feet. 'The Woman in His Life'" by Rudyard Kipling
11 - "The Dog and His Master" by Anne Kingsmill-Finch
12 - "Little Lost Pup" by Arthur Guiterman
13 - "A Little Dog That Wags His Tail" by Emily Dickinson
14 - "The Hairy Dog" by Herbert Asquith
15 - "Dogs and Weather" by Winifred Welles
16 - "Incident. Characteristics of a Favourite Dog Which Belonged to a Friend of the Author" by William Wordsworth
17 - "Confessions of a Glutton" by Don Marquis
18 - "The Fable of the Shepherd and Wolf" by John Gay
19 - "On a Spaniel Called 'Beau', Killing a Young Bird" by William Cowper
20 - "Beau's Reply" by William Cowper
21 - "Contentment" by Burges Johnson wav
22 - "The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog" by Anonymous
23 - "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat" by Eugene Field
24 - "How the Feud Started" by Arthur Guiterman
25 - "Tray" by Robert Browning
26 - "The Dog and the Water Lily. No Fable" by William Cowper
27 - "The Irish Greyhound" by Katherine Phillips
28 - "The Fable of the Mastiff" by John Gay
29 - The Dog in the Manger" by Aphra Behn
30 - "Towser, a True Tale" 20th July 1806 by Robert Tannahill
31 - "The Dog of St Bernard's" by Caroline Fry Wilson
32 - "Sonnet - to Tartar, a Terrier Beauty" by Thomas Lovell Beddoes
33 - "Tobias's Dog" by Mary Howitt
34 - "I Started Early – Took my Dog" by Emily Dickinson
35 - "Canis Major" by Robert Frost
36 - "Man and Dog" by Edward Thomas
37 - "Dog Days" by Amy Lowell
38 - "So This Is How I Turned into a Dog" by Vladamir Mayakovsky
39 - "The Dogs" by Arthur Symons
40 - "To a Black Greyhound" by Julian Grenfell
41 - "An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog" by Oliver Goldsmith
42 - "The Dog Tupman" by Stella Benson
43 - "Upon His Spaniel Tracy" by Robert Herrick
44 - "To Rollo" by Kenneth Grahame
45 - "Ruby" by Edward Lear
46 - "To Flush, My Dog" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
47 - "Kaiser Dead" by Matthew Arnold
48 - "Epitaph to a Dog" by Lord Byron
49 - "Last Words to a Dumb Friend" by Thomas Hardy
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