A little late for Valentine’s Day, optimistically early as a harbinger of Spring, Emily and I offer this compilation of poetry, three minutes short of an hour in the company of some great poets.

Emily Richard and I made it 21 years ago. Listening to it again, one was struck, of course, first of all by our younger voices, but very soon much more affected by the emotions, the ideas, the varied mental pictures

conjured up by the word music of our English language in the hands of such gifted word smiths.

I suppose too we felt a special privilege, being, for almost an hour, snuggled intimately close to so many wonderful minds. It all made me wonder why one doesn’t spend more time in such enchanting company. (I have to admit to the cheek of sneaking one very short piece of my own in between Emily Dickinson and  Robert Browning at his most magnificent.)

In its days as a CD it carried this photo, taken on a memorable walk we took one afternoon in the Lake District.