In this installment, Charles Flowers reads “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free” by William Wordsworth. Flowers graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vanderbilt University and received his M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Oregon. His poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, Barrow Street, Indiana Review, and Puerto del Sol. Flowers is also the founding editor of BLOOM, a journal for lesbian and gay writing that Edmund White has called "the most exciting new queer literary publication to emerge in years." Currently, he is Executive Director of the Lambda Literary Foundation, the country's leading literary organization for LGBTQ writers and readers.

William Wordsworth, "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free"

IT is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder--everlastingly.
Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.