Audiobook · read by volunteers
Voice of the Ancient Bard
William Blake (1757–1827)
Read by Hugh McGuire, Brad Bush, Jean O'Sullivan, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), mtl3p, Mark Bradford · 6 chapters · 6 min
About the book
William Blake's Voice of the Ancient Bard is a short poem with a large ambition. Only a few lines long, it calls on the young to leave behind the gloom of old doubts and to see the dawn of a brighter day, warning at the same time against the tangled reasoning that clouds clear sight. Its rhythm is simple, almost like a hymn, yet its images stay in the mind long after the voice has stopped. In this collection you can hear the poem six times over, each reading by a different LibriVox volunteer. Each speaker finds a slightly different pace, a different emphasis, a different shade of hope or warning, and listening to them in turn is a small lesson in how much a voice can change a poem. The whole set takes only a few minutes.
Introduction
William Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, engraver and visionary who earned little recognition during his lifetime and is now counted among the most original figures in British art and literature. He designed, engraved and coloured his own books, so that word and image formed a single object. The Voice of the Ancient Bard dates from 1794 and is one of the short lyrics gathered in his Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the combined collection he issued that year.
The poem is only a handful of lines. It addresses young readers and sets the promise of a new age against the confusion of tired argument. Blake often worked in this compact, hymn-like manner, using plain words to carry large ideas about freedom, imagination and the limits of reason. Short as it is, it rewards repeated listening, and that is exactly what this recording offers.
The collection contains six versions of the same poem, all of them together lasting only a few minutes. It comes from a LibriVox weekly poetry project, in which volunteers from different places each record the same text in their own way. Hearing the versions side by side shows how interpretation lives in small choices: where a reader pauses, which word gets weight, whether the tone is stern, tender or exultant. For anyone curious about Blake, or about how poetry sounds when read aloud, it is a quick and rewarding introduction.
Public domain
William Blake died in 1827: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text