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Listening
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If you want to listen on your PC, just left click and the file will play in your default player. For Mac users, click the title.
how to read the texts online as you listen
If you want to read the texts online as you listen, first (down)load the audio files and then click on the links below the descriptions on the right. The texts will open in this same window. When you've finished reading and listening, you can do the language activities if you wish. To return to this page, click on 'Back'.
how to read the texts offline as you listen
If you want to print the audio scripts on paper, click the links to 'See/print audio script' on the right. These will open as Word documents in a new window.
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listening downloads
Poems
Develop your English listening and reading skills using our MP3 audio files and audio scripts. You can listen to the files online, or download them onto your PC and put them on your MP3 player, then see if you've understood by reading the scripts. You can also read the poems online as you listen, and then do language activities, or print out the audio scripts and read the poems on paper as you listen.

 Address to the Haggis
This famous poem by the great Scottish poet Robert Burns is regularly recited during celebrations throughout the world, whenever Haggis makes an appearance on the menu.
(Read poem online and do language activities)
(See/print audioscript)

 a ballad of john silver
In this poem John Edward Masefield fondly reminisces about the ‘good old days’ when there were pirates on the seas!
(Read poem online and do a language activity)
(See/print audio script)

 Banyan Tree
This poem is by Nobel Prize for Literature winner Rabindranath Tagore, from India. Tagore once said ‘To study a banyan tree, you not only must know its main stem in its own soil, but also must trace the growth of its greatness in the further soil, for then you can know the true nature of its vitality’.
(Read poem online and do language activities)
(See/print audioscript)

 Eye Halve a Spelling Chequer
In this amusing poem the correct words have been substituted by homophones (two or more words that are spelt differently, but pronounced the same). It proves that computer spelling checkers are not infallible!
(Read poem online and do a language activity)
(See/print audio script)

 The Good Old Days
This amusing poem compares the meanings of words and expressions as they are used nowadays when speaking about computers, and in their original contexts.
(Read poem online and do a language activity)
(See/print audio script)

 Heat
This poem by Archibald Lampman conjures up vivid images of a sweltering summer’s day. Phew!
(Read poem online and do a language activity)
(See/print audio script)

 An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
According to encyclopedia.com “William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Irish poet and playwright ... (was) the greatest lyric poet Ireland has produced and one of the major figures of 20th-century literature”. This poem graphically illustrates how it felt to be an Irishman fighting for the Allies.
(Read poem online and do language activities)
(See/print audioscript)

 landlocked
This poem by Celia Thaxter, who during her lifetime and briefly thereafter, was one of the better known women poets in America, vividly portrays the feelings of someone who yearns for the sea.
(Read article online and do a language activity)
(See/print audio script)

 Let America Be America Again
This poem, whose title was chosen by John Kerry as the slogan for his 2004 US Presidential campaign, was written by Langston Hughes, particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties.
(Read poem online and do language activities)
(See/print audioscript)

 Mountain fable
In this fable by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement, a squirrel and a mountain have an argument!
(Read poem online and do language activities)
(See/print audioscript)

 Mulga Bill's Bicycle
This funny ballad by one of Australia’s favourite poets, ‘Banjo’ Paterson (whose most famous work is undoubtedly Waltzing Matilda), is typical of his work in that his love for the bush and its colourful characters are very apparent.
(Read poem online and do language activities)
(See/print audioscript)

 on chloris being ill
In this poem (written as a song), the great Scottish poet Robert Burns laments the illness of his loved one.
(Read poem online and do language activities)
(See/print audioscript)

 pronunciation poem
This clever and amusing poem explains why English pronunciation is so very difficult.
(Read poem online and do language activities)
(See/print audio script)

 ring out wild bells
One of Tennyson's most famous poems - partly due to its association with New Year's Eve.
(Read poem online and do a language activity)
(See/print audio script)

 the seven ages of man
The famous lines from Shakespeare's play 'As You Like It'.
(Read extract online and do language activities)
(See/print audio script)

 The Sick Child
In this sad little poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, a mother spends the night at her sick child's bedside.
(Read poem online and do a language activity)
(See/print audio script)

 the tay bridge disaster
The most famous poem from William Topaz McGonagall, who is renowned as one of the worst poets in the English language!
(Read poem online and do a language activity)
(See/print audio script)

 Travelling post office
This ballad by ‘Banjo’ Paterson shows what an enormous task it was delivering mail in a country as vast as Australia before modern technologies existed.
(Read poem online and do a language activity)
(See/print audio script)

 The Tyger
This famous poem by William Blake conjures up amazingly vivid images of the mighty tiger.
(Read poem online and do language activities)
(See/print audioscript)

 Welsh Landscape
This grim poem by R. S. Thomas, the pre-eminent Welsh poet writing in the English language is typical of his work, which is uncompromising: images like slate - hard and sharp; his style spare, unflinching, honest."
(Read poem and do language activities)
(See/print audioscript)

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