Classic Poetry

The epic grandeur of Dante's masterpiece has inspired readers and listeners for 700 years and has entered the human imagination. But the further we move from the late medieval world of Dante, the more a rich understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on knowledgeable guidance.

Eleven complete Dr. Seuss stories at a great price, featuring performances by John Cleese, Billy Crystal, Ted Danson, Kelsey Grammer, Dustin Hoffman, John Lithgow, and more!

Dating to the ninth century BC, Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb Introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it coexists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace.

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, his ascent of Mount Purgatory and his encounter with his dead love Beatrice, and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human redemption. This major translation is published here for the first time in a single volume.

Juanita di Perli was a young woman when she decided to live the rest of her life on a table-top. She called it God's will, but for the order of nuns that sprang up around her, Juanita's devotion was a curse. For decades they did the bidding of the holy grouch, and the entire island of San Juan el Pirata sighed with relief when she died. Twenty years later, the islanders fight for Juanita's canonization - not because they liked her, but because a local saint would be a tourist boon. The only thing keeping the island poor is the Archduke, who refuses to ask Rome to consider Juanita for sainthood.

A collection of Rosetti's most well known and loved poetry. Alongside the famous beauty of Rosetti's 'In the Bleak Midwinter', 'Goblin Market' is a deceptively simple poem. The story of two sisters and their temptation, punishment and redemption, written in Christina Rosetti's characteristically songlike poetry, is easily passed over as a fable or fairy story. But there are several layers more to discover in this most intriguing of poems.

When I am grown to man’s estate. I shall be very proud and great. And tell the other girls and boys. Not to meddle with my toys. Thus reads the whimsical, “Looking Forward,” of this delightful collection. From the sweetness of “Land of Nod,” to the imaginative dreams of “Pirate Story” and “Travels,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s beloved poems celebrate childhood in all its simplicity and joy.

Sappho was a female poet who was well known in ancient Greece and Rome for her lyrical poetry. She was most famous for her poems involving women who loved women, and it is from her name that sapphic, a term referring to sexual relations between women, originated. This is a compendium of her surviving work, a collection of 54 fragments translated by Henry de Vere Stacpoole.

Carved close to the original Greek, acclaimed classicist Caroline Alexander's new translation is swift and lean, with the driving cadence of its source - a translation epic in scale yet devastating in its precision and power.

जब आप दुःखी होते हैं तो फिर एक बार अपने हृदय में झाँकिए और आप देखेंगे कि वास्तव में आप उस चीज के लिए रो रहे हैं, जो आपकी खुशी का स्रोत था। आपमें से कुछ लोग कहते हैं, 'दुःख से बड़ा सुख होता है,"" और दूसरे लोग कहते हैं, ""नहीं, दुःख उससे भी बड़ा है। लेकिन मैं आपको कहता हूँ कि वे अवियोज्य हैं। दोनों साथ ही आते हैं और जब एक अकेला आपके साथ बैठता है तो याद रखिए कि दूसरा आपके बिस्तर पर सो रहा है।

Since it was first published more than 25 years ago, Robert Fitzgerald's prizewinning translation of Homer's battle epic has become a classic in its own right: a standard against which all other versions of The Iliad are compared. Fitzgerald's work is accessible, ironic, faithful, written in a swift vernacular blank verse that "makes Homer live as never before" ( Library Journal).

This remarkable poem, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I, was Spenser's finest achievement. The first epic poem in modern English, The Faerie Queene combines dramatic narratives of chivalrous adventure with exquisite and picturesque episodes of pageantry. At the same time, Spenser is expounding a deeply-felt allegory of the eternal struggle between Truth and Error....

The epitome of the romantic literary hero, Lord Byron was as well known in his time for the revolutionary panache with which he lived as for his extremely popular verse. “As a myth,” wrote Bertrand Russell, “his importance, especially on the continent, was enormous.” His many tempestuous relationships were the subject of scandal which only added to his celebrity. His name has even entered into our language to describe a man of deep passion and defiance.

This collection, narrated by distinguished Broadway actor Brian Murray, includes nine poems from Leaves of Grass - among them "I Hear America Singing", "O Captain! My Captain", and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d", plus four other selections.

The Iliad is one of the most enduring creations of Western Civilization and was originally written to be recited or chanted to the accompaniment of various instruments. Properly performed, this work today is just as meaningful, just as powerful, and just as entertaining as it was in the ninth century BC, and it casts its spell upon modern listeners with the same raw intensity as it did upon the people of ancient times.

Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy.

Renowned poet and critic Clive James presents the crowning achievement of his career: a monumental translation into English verse of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy is the precursor of modern literature, and this translation - decades in the making - gives us the entire epic as a single, coherent and compulsively listenable lyric poem. Written in the early 14th century and completed in 1321, the year of Dante’s death, The Divine Comedy is perhaps the greatest work of epic poetry ever composed.

A wonderful selection of Yeats' finest work, read by the author himself along with Siobhan McKenna and others.

Li Po's poems have been spread out thru the ages; even today they are highly praiseworthy. But only some know about his style of fencing called Li Po's Drunken Sword. In terms of his famous works, the reader will discover how the poet's swordplay and wine drinking under the moon affected his poetic legacy. These collected poems has been inspired by the works that the Tang-period poet Li Po (701-762 CE) left after him as a great cultural heritage, and of whom I will have more to say on the pages below. It was with him that this book began; without him, none of what follows after the short ...

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892), one of the most popular of poets, is celebrated in 2009. Works such as The Charge of the Light Brigade, Crossing the Bar and Tears, Idle Tears have made him an internationally famous figure, and the second most quoted writer of all time (after Shakespeare).