[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
John Keats’ Ode To A Nightingale
- Recited by Benedict Cumberbatch
[To] Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow…
…I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy
