À Glee for Winter

Alfred Domett was born in England in 1811 and died in 1887. He spent a good part of his life in New Zealand, where he worked as a colonial official and eventually served as the country’s premier in the early 1860s. In his youth he was a friend of the poet Robert Browning, who wrote a poem about his departure for the other side of the world, and Domett himself published poetry throughout his career.

A Glee for Winter was included in A Victorian Anthology, a collection of nineteenth-century English verse compiled and published in 1895. A glee is a part-song for several voices, traditionally cheerful, and the poem keeps something of that spirit: it is brisk, cheerful and musical. It reflects the Victorian pleasure in the seasons, and in the idea that even the coldest weather has its own delights.

This recording belongs to a weekly poetry project at LibriVox. In such projects, volunteers record the same short poem, and the versions are collected in one place. The week in question was in December 2007, a fitting moment for a winter poem. There are nine versions, and the total running time is only about twelve minutes. Listen to a few in a row, and you will notice how each reader finds a different pulse in the same lines.

Although each version is short, the collection offers a pleasant lesson in how much a voice can add to a few lines. Listening to a handful in succession, you will find that the poem becomes more familiar, and also more surprising. It makes an easy and cheerful addition to a winter playlist.