Great Poets

By Carter Davis Johnson In a period where American literature was considered peripheral and amateur, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) helped create a national literature to challenge European authors. His poetry heralded the unique mythology, history, and nature of America. With lucid imagery and accessible meter, Longfellow became a leading poet and...

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I wandered, drunk and weary, Over many a quaint and dimlit alley of forgotten doors— While I plodded, barely standing, suddenly I heard a chanting, As of someone softly ranting, ranting from the darkened doors. “It’s some other drunk,” I muttered, “chanting from the...

By David B. Gosselin The nature of the subject matter discussed in Dante Alighieri’s lyric poetry, his canzoni, has been debated time after time, generation after generation. While the Dantisti as they are called, the Dante scholars, will often take up the habit of prating on individual details and individual poems,...

Homer’s Iliad I.1-47. Translation in the epic hexameter, the meter of the Greek. Sing of the wrath, my goddess, of Peleus’ son Achilles, doomed and destructive, which gave the Achaeans numberless sorrows, sending so many robust souls down to the house of Hades, spirits of heroes, but bodies abandoned as...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (born February 27, 1807 - died March 24, 1882) was an American poet of the Romantic period. He served as a professor at Harvard University and was an adept linguist, traveling throughout Europe and immersing himself in European culture and poetry, which he emulated in his poetry. Before...

by Annabelle Fuller John Keats (born October 31, 1795 - died February 23, 1821) began life as the son of a stable-owner, and ended it as an unmarried, poor and tuberculosis-ridden young man. Somewhere along the way, he managed to become one of the most beloved poets of the English...

Any treatise claiming critical review of verse, whether in the widest sense, or, as in this case, the result of compressed choice, purely down to the author’s own consideration, I hasten to add, is probably deigned to fail as an intelligent summation of poetry penned by John Keats. That said,...

by Dusty Grein The Man The American poet Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, CA. He spent his first 40 years mostly unknown, and it wasn’t until after returning to the United States from England—where he had his first two books of poetry published—near the...

John Milton (Born December 9, 1608 – died November 8, 1674) was an English poet of the late Renaissance period. He is most noted for his epic poem on the fall of Satan and Adam and Eve’s ejection from the Garden of Eden, Paradise Lost, which he composed after having gone...

By David Gosselin The answer to the above question is of course no. Shakespeare and Dante are not dead because every true poet is immortal. However, much of our contemporary thinkers seem to be under the impression that they are dead, and that they are not as relevant and talented...

Of course, I like to see rainbows, But my heart hasn’t leapt for one; I’ve not wandered like a cloud blows, Though I’ve been lonely in the sun. Oh, I like Nature, that’s for sure— I just can’t feel Wordsworth’s amour. I’m sometimes in a pensive mood (And, yes, my...

  Re-visiting Dante “For Dante it was a strict rule not to rhyme the word ‘Christ’ with any other word except itself” – Clive James Inferno Down we went like no other care were there; No sense we’d be bedraggled, drowned, doomed, or lost; All that mattered was now, that...

Dante’s Inferno, Canto I (Poem by Dante Alighieri / translation by J. Simon Harris in terza rima) In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself again in a dark forest, for I had lost the pathway straight and right. Ah how hard it is to describe,...

By Joshua Philipp The poetry of John Keats is known for its light and dreamy nature. Even in his time, in the early 1800s, he was considered old-fashioned, both in his topics and in his style of writing. He was set in sharp contrast to one of his contemporaries, Lord...

Inspired by the Ashland, Oregon, Shakespeare Festival Narrator: William Shakespeare—Shakspere? Shaksper? Shakespear? Shackespeare? Shake-and-Bake-speare?—died but did not Go to heaven. Sent instead to town called Ashland where, in purgatorial shame, Was forced to spend eternity in watching Every play that bore his name replayed, Replayed and played again in time-looped glory;...

By Joshua Philipp The Italian poet Dante Alighieri is best known for his journey into hell, purgatory, and heaven which he told of in his "Divine Comedy." But before he took that journey, he took a very different, although in some ways very similar, journey into the world of longing,...

Penelope’s Postscript Uncounted days, wrung dry of tears— Lost wanderers do not return: So much for the departed years. Heap up my mangled hopes and fears, Leave Ithaka to mock and spurn Uncounted days. Wrung dry of tears I shut from my importuned ears The suitors’ pleas. How could I...

Ephemeral Constant With hued music, beautified page. His spheres were thinner than gossamer, Only to beauty, did Keats defer. Was omni-sensory, ahead of his age, Gifted synesthete; few could gauge. Lines between realities could he blur, With Psyche, or nightingale easily confer. Complex were stanzas, of youthful sage. ‘Cockney’ image...

By Wilbur Dee Case One of the most unlikely poems of the Modernist period is that by Robert Frost: "The Pasture." It is unlikely for many reasons. First, it seems more like a Romantic lyric, i.e., one hundred years too late, because of its rural depiction and its simple, formal...

by Evan Mantyk WHAT DOES THE classic Chinese story Journey to the West have to do with William Shakespeare’s classic play Hamlet? A lot it turns out. Both Hamlet and Journey to the West were written in the late 16th century, one in China and the other in England. Both rely heavily on poetry. Both also are...

By Conan Milner | The Epoch Times For centuries, the plays of William Shakespeare have been celebrated for their larger-than-life storytelling and rhythmic language. Now the Bard’s work is being studied as a way to help children overcome challenges associated with autism. Kelly Hunter, an actress with the Royal Shakespeare Theatre...

By Douglas Thornton "And lo I lie between the sun and thee" (Venus and Adonis; line 194) To see the poet in the act of composition, to hear his words tell not only the story, but with imaginative zeal, recount the inner movements of his life, makes prejudice relax, and...

Original Shakespeare followed by imitation.   Sonnet 49 Against that time, if ever that time come, When I shall see thee frown on my defects, When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum, Called to that audit by advis'd respects; Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass, And...

By Wilbur Dee Case | Edited by Kent Van May Now I can see why T.S. Eliot disliked Edgar Allan Poe's verse; Eliot was trying to write a different kind of poetry; and it is no surprise that, for Eliot, Poe was no kindred spirit. Yet it was unwise for Eliot...

William Shakespeare is believed to have died on April 23, 1616. Post your commemorative poems in the comments section or email to [email protected]. Remembering Shakespeare By Dusty Grein The Bard of Avon gave us many gifts. An actor, true, but he was so much more; A poet of renown and...

By Dusty Grein and Evan Mantyk “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the English language’s most popular and influential poems since it was written in 1845. Much of this was Poe’s own doing, as he performed it quite frequently, and wrote many essays and commentaries on it...

Inspired by real events in China   Not that long ago in China, in a labor camp confined a Year or longer, I was sitting, making for a U.S. store Christmas tree lights meant for hanging, when there came an awful banging Like a phantom’s chains’ loud clanging—angling through the...

  A Fifteen-Year-Old's Response to Frost "This 'pome' don't make NO sense! What junk!" the scowling students muttered. "Two roads in the woods!" one hissed. "Such bunk"-- opinions rudely uttered. I quelled the urge to hurl my book. I said, "Can't you surmise what they might mean? Let's take a...

for E.E. Club Saw Reid   I. Priam, Returning to the Ramparts He’d never say it to my face and yet I sense that Hector senses I’m washed up: too old, too soft. Not that he is the pup that sees for the first time his dad beset with something...

Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare Some say that Shakespeare didn’t write The many works that bear his name; But surely if that were the case, A rival would have blown his game...   Inner Beauty My wife was born without her eyes; She cannot love her pretty face, Yet knows her inner...

In Rembrandt's scene of 1653, Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer, there is much that we can see amidst that musty sett(l)ing of gold dust that balances upon the old and new, upon the dark and light, upon the dead and living, giving forth beams of the true and glimmerings...

From Dante, to Beatrice In your father’s garden we first met, a pair in exile, two children playing without a care, in our shared exile. You were eight, I, nine, you in crimson and I blind to all else but the fall of your fair hair, from my exile. For...

The Trojan War has finished its long course. Achaeans won by sneaking past the vaulting walls As if they were a gift: a wooden horse. A decade done, at last the city falls! And yet the riches found were not it all, Along with war, there came a great  resource...

My Love, Penelope My love, Penelope, I'm incomplete– You are not here, and I feel so alone; Love is a chore, without you there's no heat, Only dust, mere air, for you're my blood and bone. Victory brings me riches, glory and slaves, Each night a bacchanalia, all I've desired...

  I This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heaven’s eternal King, Of wedded maid and Virgin Mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That he our deadly forfeit should release, And with his...

On the shores of Gitche Gumee, Of the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood Nokomis, the old woman, Pointing with her finger westward, O'er the water pointing westward, To the purple clouds of sunset.     Fiercely the red sun descending Burned his way along the heavens, Set the sky on fire behind him, As...

The American poet Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, CA. He spent his first 40 years mostly unknown, and it wasn’t until after returning to the United States from England—where he had his first two books of poetry published—near the beginning of the first World...

. The Tyger Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what...