Welcome back to The Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Friday, March 26, 2021.

The poem that I'm going to read today is by Robert Salvey. He was an English poet. He was a romantic poet,

who lived from August of 1774 until the 21st of March in 1843. So another March birthday.

He was kind of in the same school. He was a lake poet along with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. And like them, he was

deeply involved in politics, although he became increasingly more conservative as he got older.

Interesting facts about Robert Southey. He was the author of the

original version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which I did not know until researching for this poem,

and I find fascinating. It's kind of apropos of nothing, but is if nothing else an interesting

factoid for when you play the random trivia game where you have

to stump a friend who knows stuff about poetry. The poem that I'm going to read today is called

The Cataract of Lador, and it's pretty long. It's a quick read, but because it's a little long,

I'm only going to read it once. It's a pretty fun poem, though, so it's a good one to

to listen to with your kids if you only listen with them haphazardly.

One thing to know before I read this, though, is that Robert Southey was Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death in 1843.

So for 30 years, he was the Poet Laureate of England.

So that's an explanation of something that you hear at one point

early in this poem. So here is Robert Salih's The Cataract of Lador. How does the water come down at

Lador? My little boy asked me thus, once on a time. And moreover, he tasked me to tell him in rhyme anon at the word

there first came one daughter and then came another to second and third the request of their brother

and to hear how the water comes down at lador with its rush and its roar as many a time they had seen it

before so i told them in rhyme, for of rhymes

I had store, and t'was in my vocation for the recreation that so I should sing, because I was

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