"A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl are two poems by an unknown author written in about 1400. Sir Gawain is a romance, a fairy-tale for adults, full of life and colour; but it is also much more than this, being at the same time a powerful moral tale which examines religious and social values.
Pearl is apparently an elegy on the death of a child, a poem pervaded with a sense of great personal loss: but, like Gawain it is also a sophisticated and moving debate on much less tangible matters.
Sir Orfeo is a slighter romance, belonging to an earlier and different tradition. It was a special favourite of Tolkien’s.
The three translations represent the complete rhyme and alliterative schemes of the originals."
"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..."
"In Paradise Regained, Satan again is on the prowl, having successfully tempted Adam and Eve and forced their departure from the Garden of Eden, here he sets out to tempt again - this time Jesus himself as he comes to the end of his forty days in the desert. The magisterial poetry of Milton enriches the encounter and, while not matching the greatness achieved in Paradise Lost, provides drama and depth."
"This selection of Hardy's poetry does full justice to its humanity, integrity, humour and evocative power, ranging from charming anthology pieces such as 'Weathers' to the great love poems he wrote after the death of his first wife and the meditations on war and philosophy. The poems - nearly eighty in total - are set in the context of his life and thought, including personal writings by him and those closest to him."
"Warm and witty, direct and droll, the sharply funny Pam Ayres has been amusing and entertaining her many fans for more than 30 years since her first television appearance on Opportunity Knocks. Her humorous observations of daily life touch a chord with anybody who's ever been bewildered by the exercise craze or has yearned after the vanished Spotted Dick. In this collection, Pam reads over 50 of her best-known and loved poems, including such favourites as 'Oh I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth', 'I'm a Starling...me Darling', 'Will I have to be Sexy at Sixty?', and 'St. Tesco'. Many of the poems include a personal introduction by Pam."
"The Waste Land is a highly influential and controversial 433-line modernist poem written by T. S. Eliot. It is perhaps the most famous and most written-about long poem of the 20th century, detailing the journey of the human soul searching for redemption, the decline of civilization and the impossibility of recovering meaning in life. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem-its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures-the poem has nonetheless become a familiar touchstone of modern literature."
"Chaucer's greatest work, written towards the end of the fourteenth century, paints a brilliant picture of medieval life, society, and values. The stories range from the romantic, courtly idealism of The Knight's Tale to the joyous bawdy of the Miller's; all are told with a freshness and vigour in this modern verse translation that make them a delight to hear."
"This is a short poem about Sam McGee, a prospector from Tennessee during the Yukon gold rush who died on the trail. Sam McGee feared the icy grave and made his partner Cap promise to cremate him after his death. "A promise made is a debt unpaid" Cap reminds himself as he tells this story of the hardships, both physically and mentally, of fulfilling on the promise to cremate Sam McGee."
"The earliest extant heroic epic in any European vernacular, Beowulf is considered the most important poem in Old English. The title character is a warrior of superhuman strength who accomplishes glorious deeds to honor his king. He also represents the ideal lord and vassal, generous to his own men while fulfilling all the forms of courtesy at court. The narrative itself falls into two parts: Beowulf first rescues the royal house of Denmark from two marauding monsters; then, after having ruled his people peacefully for fifty years, he is called upon to combat a dragon that is terrorizing the countryside.
Combining mythical elements with actual historical figures and events, the narrative ranges from fierce action sequences to detailed portrayals of court life and earnest considerations of social and moral dilemmas, all in a tone of sustained grandeur."
"Byron's exuberant masterpiece narrates the exploits of Don Juan, a handsome and charming young man naturally gifted with the ladies. After his first illicit love affair at the age of sixteen in his native Spain, Don Juan is exiled to Italy and catapulted into a string of adventures that send him into dire peril and luxurious boudoirs around the world. Following a dramatic shipwreck and an affair with a pirate's daughter on a Greek island, he is sold into slavery and finds himself in a Sultan's harem, then in battle in Turkey, and finally in Russia, where he becomes the lover of Catherine the Great.
Written in ottava rima stanza form, Byron'sDon Juanblends high drama with outrageous farce. Sprinkled with digressions on wealth, power, society, chastity, poets, and England,Don Juanis a poetical novel of satirical fervor and wit."
""To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour." -from "Auguries of Innocence"
At the end of his life, William Blake gave up hope of being widely understood, but the twentieth century brought his work a new and intense interest and acclaim. A poet, artist, and mystic, Blake declared that "I must Create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's." And create he did.
Included in this collection are well-known poems such as "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright" and "A Poison Tree," longer poems such as "The Everlasting Gospel," an assortment of epigrams and short satire, and Blake's principal prose work, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.""
