Hello and welcome to the Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White, and today is Thursday, February 25th. And today I'm

going to read for you a poem by American poet James Russell Lull. Loll was born on February 22, 1819, so it is

his birthday week, and he died in 1891. During his lifetime, he was very famous and influential poet. He's

associated with the fireside poets, which was a group of New England writers who were some of the

first American poets to rival the prestige and influence and popularity of the British poets of the time.

So they were very widely known and respected in their own lifetime.

And James Russell Lull's influence continues today.

He was also a critic and editor and a diplomat, which is interesting.

And the poem I'm going to read today is called The Sirens.

And it's a lengthy poem, so I'm only going to read it once. And I'm going to give you a little

bit of food for thought to carry with you as you're listening. The title, The Sirens,

refers to an image from ancient mythology, probably one of the most influential and enduring images from ancient

literature that continues in Western culture today. The story goes that these sirens were

these creatures from Greek mythology that enticed sailors to their destruction with their irresistibly beautiful

singing. And their most famous appearance in literature is in Homer's The Odyssey, when our hero,

Odysseus, the great king and warrior who's fought in the Trojan war, came up with the idea of

the Trojan horse, and he's going home in glory. But he offends the

God Poseidon. And so the sea itself rises up against him along with many other dangers and

temptations along the way. And all Odysseus wants to do is get home, but he encounters these

sirens who called to him with their irresistible singing.

In Odysseus, he's curious about the sirens. So he plugs his sailors' ears with wax. This was

advice that he gets from a goddess named Circe. And she tells him, you cannot listen to the sirens.

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