Robert Southey's "His Books"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a radical but became steadily more conservative as he gained respect for Britain and its institutions. Other romantics such as Byron accused him of siding with the establishment for money and status. He is remembered especially for the poem "After Blenheim" and the original version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".

-bio via Wikipedia

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, May 9th, 2004. Today's poem is by Robert Salvey, and it's called His Books. I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and then read it one more time.
0:19.7	His books.
0:26.7	My days among the dead are past.
0:33.6	Around me I behold, where'er these casual eyes are cast the mighty minds of old.
0:39.3	My never-failing friends are they, with whom I converse day by day. With them I take delight in wheel and seek relief in woe.
0:43.3	And while I understand and feel how much to them I owe, my cheeks have often been bedewed
0:49.3	with tears of thoughtful gratitude.
0:51.3	My thoughts are with the dead.
0:53.3	With them I live in long past years. Their
0:56.8	virtues love, their faults condemn, or take their hopes and fears, and from their lessons seek
1:03.2	and find instruction but in humble mind. My hopes are with the dead. Anon my place with them
1:09.4	will be, and I with them shall travel on through
1:12.0	all futurity. Yet leaving here a name, I trust, that will not perish in the dust.
1:25.4	Robert Salvey was a late poet contemporary of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor, Coleridge,
1:34.3	and of the same romantic school.
1:37.8	There's some controversy about the pronunciation of his name, but it is most definitely
1:42.8	Saudii, not suhury.
1:48.0	The poet Lord Byron in his lengthy poem, Don Juan, rhymes Robert's last name with the word
1:58.3	mouthy, if that weren't proof enough.
2:03.5	Here, he does something that has a storied history and pedigree.
2:11.1	He expresses his affection for the dead authors whose books fill his library.
2:19.9	In fact, there's a bit of a reversal that takes some time to really come off.
	...

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