Ancient Poetry

Published at the author’s own expense in 1896, after rejection from publishers, this collection contains a cycle of 63 poems. Despite exploring themes of lost love, obsession, pessimism, and death, the poems touched English readers and the book became a best seller during the Second Boer War and World War I. The collection, set in a half-imagined pastoral Shropshire, includes the well-known poems "When I Was One-and-Twenty", "To an Athlete Dying Young", and "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now".

The Kalevala is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity and the sense of nationality that led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917. Beginning with the traditional Finnish creation myth, the Kalevala branches out into stories of the creation of the earth, plants, creatures, and the sky. There are many stories of, romance, kidnapping, seduction, and magical spell casting and singing.

Les "Illuminations" ont été publiées en 1886, sous forme de feuilletons, dans la revue "La Vogue". Rimbaud a remis ces poèmes à Verlaine lors de leur rencontre à Stuttgart en mars 1875. C'est Verlaine qui s'est occupé de publier ces vers. Il y insère une préface dans laquelle il annonce que ces "ornementations colorées" se composent de "prose exquise ou vers délicieusement faux exprès".

Here are some of the finest poems by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), a unique voice in American poetry. She is known for her short poems, full of acute observations, and deft use of language. This careful but imaginative selection shows the remarkable variety she produced, despite the miniature nature of her medium.

The Epic of Gilgamesh relates the tale of the fifth king of the first dynasty of Uruk (in what is modern-day Iraq), who reigned for 126 years, according to the ancient Sumerian list of kings. Gilgamesh was first inscribed in cuneiform writing on clay tablets by an unknown author during the Sumerian era and has been described as one of the greatest works of literature in the recounting of mankind's unending quest for immortality.

The John Milton Poetry Collection includes four of his most beloved works, sharing Milton's pioneering writing on everything from politics to religion. As you listen, be transported to the 17th century when political and religious tensions were high and war was imminent. Listen as Milton's works reveal his opinions on biblical themes, political division, and personal freedoms.

Homer's Iliad is the famous epic poem set among the tales of Troy. Its subject is the anger of the hero Achilles and its consequences for the warring Greeks and Trojans. Unlike other books on the Iliad, this one combines the detailed expertise of a historian with the sensitivity of a teacher of it as poetry. Lane Fox goes on to consider hallmarks of the poem, its values, implicit and explicit, its characters, its women, its gods and even its horses. He argues repeatedly for its beautiful observation and addresses its parallel use of what is, to us, the natural world.

The ancient Greeks revered Homer and Hesiod and often cited their names together in theological and theological works. While the two could have been contemporaries, some estimate that Hesiod lived up to 100 years after Homer. Sappho was an ancient Greek poetess and musician. She pioneered song lyrics and the ancient Greeks included her in the canon of nine lyric poets. Plato even numbered her among the Parnassian goddesses, referring to her as the tenth muse.

"Comment traduire l'énigme et la lucidité, évoquer les menus détails du réel, pénétrer avec ou sans désinvolture l'univers onirique un peu trouble mais évident de Pessoa ? La voix de Richard Graille relève ce défi. A sa voix nue ou presque nue se mêlent les accords de la guitare, tantôt cordes grattées, tantôt caisse frappée. Le nuancier des états d'âme et la nature des situations se déclinent subtilement dans la singularité d'un accent, dans les aspérités du chant, la fluidité d'un cri."

The iconic love story of the Middle East, by a 12th-century Persian poet who has been compared to Shakespeare for his subtlety, inventiveness, and dramatic force, Layli and Majnun tells of star-crossed lovers whose union is tragically thwarted by their families and whose passion continues to ripple out across the centuries. Theirs is a love that lasts a lifetime, and in Nezami's immortal telling, erotic longing blends with spiritual self-denial in an allegory of Sufi aspiration, as the amenities of civilization give way to the elemental wilderness.

The Theogony (composed c. 700 BC) is a poem by Hesiod (8th-7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods. A theogony is a part of Greek mythology which attempts to articulate reality as a whole. Hesiod's work is a synthesis of various local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells of their origin and how they established control over the Cosmos.

These two great poems date from Shakespeare’s early years and are full of passion and invention. In Venus and Adonis, the goddess of love pleads with the beautiful boy to submit to her advances and become her love - but he only wants to hunt boar. In the more serious Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare draws on the Roman tale of the Emperor Tarquin’s desire for Lucrece and its tragic consequencies. These poems give prominent parts to the two heroines, and Clare Corbett and Eve Best shine.

Virgil's Aeneid, one of the greatest classical poems, tells the story of Aeneas, son of Priam, after the fall of Troy. His quest is to find the site "in the west" where he will found a new town prophesied to be the seat of a world empire: Rome.

Richard Burton and Ralph Richardson join together in this unqiue musical production of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The superb delivery of both these actors is augmented by an original soundtrack composed by David Moore.

Under the order of King Pelias, Jason embarks on a perilous journey to steal the Golden Fleece from the Land of Colchis. Far from heroic, Jason is the typical everyman. Often compared with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts is the only surviving poem from the Hellenistic period and was hugely influential on later literature, especially the Roman poetry of Virgil and Ovid.

Libidinous, licentious, salacious and very, very funny, The Satyricon is one of the most remarkable documents from ancient Rome. It tells the ribald story of Encolpius, a man of active and varied appetites (powered notably by his passion for his favourite lover, the handsome Giton), who plunges without inhibition into the life of Roman pleasures: orgies of food, feasting, abundant sex and escapades. The kind of hedonism found occasionally in Roman mosaics is here brought to life.

Taliesin's is one of the most important names in all Welsh literature - and one of its greatest mysteries. He has fascinated and inspired some of our greatest poets, including Tennyson and Robert Graves. He is a poet; a shape-shifter; a seer; a chronicler of battles fought, by sword and with magic, between the ancient kingdoms of the fifth- and sixth-century British Isles; a bridge between old Welsh mythologies and the new Christian theology; and a figure whose literary legend culminated with the compilation in 13th-century North Wales of The Book of Taliesin.

The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot, read by Edoardo Ballerini. To mark the centenary of the publication of The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, Faber & Faber, in association with the T. S. Eliot Foundation, commissioned this new recording of T. S. Eliot's major poems, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini. Ballerini is widely regarded as the brightest star of the audiobook era, one of the finest narrators of literature today.

"Eugène Onéguine, le roman en vers de Pouchkine, est le plus grand livre jamais écrit en russe. Le traduire aura été le travail de ma vie. J'ai voulu en conserver une voix vivante, en demandant à ma mère, Daredjan, qui m'a transmis la langue et le connaît par cœur, de dire le texte russe. Ce n'est pas une lecture d'artiste, (les plus grands acteurs russes ont enregistré 'leur' Onéguine), c'est le témoignage d'une lecture familiale, de la façon dont ce roman, - dont ce poème - peut vivre, au jour le jour, dans le cœur de chaque Russe."

François Mauriac est né à Bordeaux en 1845. Il fit ses études chez les jésuites puis à la faculté de Bordeaux. À Paris, il s'inscrivit à l'école des Chartes, mais se consacra bientôt uniquement aux lettres. Dès 1906, il collaborait à la "Revue du Temps Présent" et publia en 1909 son premier livre, un recueil de poésie "Les Mains jointes". Il reçoit en 1925 le grand Prix du roman pour "Désert de l'amour". Président de la Société des Gens de Lettres en 1932, il est appelé à l'Académie française en 1933.