Recuerdo, by Edna St. Vincent Millay

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I’ve recently been made aware, via the excellent Audio Bookshelf blog, of the LibriVox project, which is a volunteer effort to make audio recordings of literature in the public domain available for free download. The project began less than two years ago, and they already have hundreds of audio files available, including one of my favorite poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Recuerdo, read here by David Gunn.

Clearly, I’m not the only person who likes this poem. There are nine different audio recordings of the poem in the LibriVox catalog.

And here is the text of the poem.

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable–
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
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More poetry

~ by lolarusa on December 29, 2006.