Poetry by individual poets

In Paradise, having plunged to the uttermost depths of Hell and climbed the Mount of Purgatory, Dante ascends to Heaven, continuing his soul's search for God, guided by his beloved Beatrice.

The brightest star at the court of King Charles II, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-80), lived a life of reckless debauchery and sexual adventuring that led to his death at the age of thirty-three - described by Samuel Johnson as having 'blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness'.

One of the great romances of the Middle Ages, Tristan, written in the early thirteenth century, is based on a medieval love story of grand passion and deceit.

One of the great English Romantic poets, William Blake (1757-1827) was an artist, poet, mystic and visionary.

First published in July 1850, shortly after Wordsworth's death, The Prelude was the culmination of over fifty years of creative work.

Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written.

'It was with aweThat I beheldFresh leaves, green leaves,Bright in the sun'When the Japanese haiku master Basho composed The Narrow Road to the Deep North, he was an ardent student of Zen Buddhism, setting off on a series of travels designed to strip away the trappings of the material world and bring spiritual enlightenment.

One of the earliest extant versions of the Tristan and Yseut story, Beroul's French manuscript of The Romance of Tristan dates back to the middle of the twelfth century.

This collection of Ovid's poems deals with the whole spectrum of sexual desire, ranging from deeply emotional declarations of eternal devotion to flippant arguments for promiscuity.

On 15 August 778, Charlemagne s army was returning from a successful expedition against Saracen Spain when its rearguard was ambushed in a remote Pyrenean pass.

This selection gives equal weight to the two aspects of Robert Burns's reputation, as a lyricist and as a much-loved Scottish poet.

This selection of the works of W B Yeats, includes the final book from the unfairly neglected narrative poem 'The Wanderings of Oisin' and a number of lyrics from Yeats's work as poetic dramatist.

Set against the epic backdrop of the battle of Troy, Troilus and Criseyde is an evocative story of love and loss.

Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c.

SHELLEY'S WORK HAS BEEN CRITICIZED FOR ITS DIDACTICISM AND UNDISCIPLINED EMOTIONALISM.

When this volume of Shakespeare's poems first appeared in 1609, he had already written most of the great plays that made him famous.

Written after he had been banished to the Black Sea city of Tomis by Emperor Augustus, the Fasti is Ovid's last major poetic work.

A selection of Brian Patten's best work over the last forty-five years, chosen by the poet himself.

Michael Rosen's Selected Poems is a wonderfully moving sequence of prose poems extracted from his acclaimed autobiographical triptych, Carrying the Elephant, This is Not My Nose and In the Colonie.

Tennyson's poetry epitomizes the Victorian age, for which he became a spokesman.

Many have made the journey.

John Milton was a master of almost every type of verse, from the classical to the religious and from the lyrical to the epic.

In the twenty-one poems of the Heroides, Ovid gave voice to the heroines and heroes of epic and myth.

Thomas Hardy wrote some of the most moving and personal poems in his era and this collection brings together the best of his verse on life and love.

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Basho, one of the greatest of Japanese poets and the master of haiku, was also a Buddhist monk and a life-long traveller.

The novella 'Mozart's Journey to Prague' (1855) is an imaginary recreation of the journey Mozart made from Vienna in 1787 to conduct the first performance of Don Giovanni.

A unique treatise by a poet, written for poets, on the art of poetry, LA VITA NUOVA is elaborately and symbolically patterned, consisting of a selection of Dante's early poems, interspersed with his own prose commentary.

Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu are the only heroes to have survived from the ancient literature of Babylon, immortalized in this epic poem that dates back to the 3rd millennium BC.

The centenary of Patrick Kavanagh's birth in 2004 provides the ideal opportunity to reappraise one of modern Ireland's greatest poets.

Sunjata Keita was the founder of one of the greatest empires of Western Africa.

'Still remarkably vivid.

Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope.

One of the major poets of Romanticism, Wordsworth epitomized the spirit of his age with his celebration of the natural world and the spontanous expression of feeling.

'The most truthful translation ever, conveying as many nuances and whispers as are possible from the original' The TimesAfter a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, Virgil wrote the Aeneid to honour the emperor Augustus by praising his legendary ancestor Aeneas.

Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature.

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'Nothing more lonely -' A selection of Basho's most magical haikuIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday.

'The Argonauts were terrified at the sight.

'All those excessive, useless regrets.

'Tonight he noticed how the women's eyesPassed from him to the strong men that were whole.

'She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth'A selection of Rossetti's most famous poems, from the hallucinatory 'Goblin Market' to 'In the bleak mid-winter' Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday.

Marie de France (fl.

Regarded by many as the greatest of the Metaphysical poets, John Donne (1572-1631) was also among the most intriguing figures of the Elizabethan age.

'Tomorrow I must set off to receive that blow, to seek out that creature in green, God help me!

'One of the first men of this century' is how Heine described himself when he claimed to have been born in the early hours of 1800.

'But I, while vineyards ring with the cicadas' scream,Retrace your steps, alone, beneath the burning sun.

'Yes, we did many things, then - allBeautiful .

'Drawn on by his eagerness for the open sky, he left his guide and soared upwards.

This is the only volume to bring together all of Allen Ginsberg's published verse in its entirety, celebrating half a century of brilliant work from one of America's greatest poets.