“Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.” Described by his friend Charles Lamb as “an archangel slightly damaged”, Coleridge was deemed a towering genius by many of his contemporaries, and one who, in conversation, had no equal....

“Though absent long, These forms of beauty have not been to me, As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towns in cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart” William Wordsworth’s verse was the embodiment of the Romantic age, with its ...

Contains Poe\"s complete poems and three essays on poetry The undisputed pioneer of the horror, detective and science-fiction genres, Edgar Allan Poe was an accomplished poet as well as a celebrated writer of short stories....

First published in 1855 and extended by the author over the course of more than three decades, Leaves of Grass embodies Walt Whitman’s lifetime ambition to create a new voice that could capture the spirit and vibrancy of the young American nation, while celebrating at the same time “Nature without check with original energy”....

During his short and restless life, Percy Bysshe Shelley produced a great number of poems, three verse plays and numerous prose works, as well as many essays in which he propounded his philosophical views and radical political ideas....

Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways....

“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Blind, broken by the death of his wife and bitterly disappointed by the Restoration, Milton dictated his sweeping biblical epic Paradise Lost to a series of helpers....

Shakespeare\"s Sonnets are among the most lyrical and moving pieces of poetry in any language, abounding with examples of his genius for wordplay, rhythm and metaphor and dealing with the eternal themes of love, memory, beauty and the ravishes of time....