O Hollow Hollow Hollow

LibriVox volunteers bring you 17 recordings of O Hollow Hollow Hollow by W.S. Gilbert. This was the Weekly Poetry project for January 8, 2012.

Here is a poem by the "fleshly" poet, Bunthorne, from the opera Patience, by Gilbert and Sullivan. Who better to introduce it than the poet himself:

BUNTHORNE. It is a wild, weird, fleshy thing; yet very tender, very yearning, very precious. It is called, "Oh, Hollow! Hollow! Hollow!"
PATIENCE Is it a hunting song?
BUNTHORNE. A hunting song? No, it is not a hunting song. It is the wail of the poet's heart on discovering that everything is commonplace. To understand it, cling passionately to one another and think of faint lilies.

Bunthorne was considered to have been modelled on Oscar Wilde, but more recent reseach has suggested that this claim is not correct. ( Summary by Algy Pug )