“The Janitor’s Boy” is one of the poems that is brought to life by Natalie Merchant in this performance called ‘Leave Your Sleep’, the poem was originally written by Nathalia Crane in 1927 when she was just 10 years old.I first came across this on TED a few months ago and a lot of things I like collided together: Natalie merchant, forgotten 19th and early 20th century poetry, great original music and a memorable performance. Here Merchant takes old, a lot of them forgotten, poems and puts them to music and performs them to a live audience. You can watch it again and again and each time you’ll pick up something you missed all the times you watched it before. It comes courtesy of TED. You’ll remember this one long after the clapping has died down.

TED’s tagline is “Ideas Worth Spreading” and this is one of them. If you haven’t been on Ted Talks before I should warn you… you may never come back. The video is embedded below. Enjoy.