Poetry Books

An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript

Thomas Gray

To some the eighteenth-century definition of proper poetic matter is unacceptable; but to any who believe that true poetry may (if not "must") consist in "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expres..

An Essay on Criticism

Alexander Pope

An Essay on Criticism is one of the first major poems written by the English writer Alexander Pope. It is the source of the famous quotations "To err is human, to forgive divine," "A little learning i..

The Song of Roland

Moncrief

The Song of Roland is an epic poem based on the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778, during the reign of Charlemagne. It is the oldest surviving major work of French literature and exists in various manus..

Idylls of the King

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Idylls of the King, published between 1859 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for G..

The Columbiad

Joel Barlow

The Columbiad is a philosophical epic poem by the American diplomat and man of letters Joel Barlow. It grew out of Barlow's earlier poem The Vision of Columbus. Intended as a national epic for the Uni..

Confessio Amantis

John Gower

Confessio Amantis is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative ..

Pharsalia

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus

De Bello Civili, more commonly referred to as the Pharsalia, is a Roman epic poem by the poet Lucan, detailing the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the ..

An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic

Anonymous

The Epic of Gilgamesh is roughly 4000 years old, making it one of the earliest known works of written literature. It comes from Mesopotamia (aka ancient Iraq), and features the Sumerian legends of the..