Classic English Style

The Iliad of Homer is the earliest work of European literature that we have. Created in the eighth century BC it has continued to arouse interest for over 2000 years. The author intended it to be heard, as delivered by a bard or rhapsode who had made the presentation of Greek epic poetry his profession, and who had command of the vocal resources and the dramatic power to move his audience.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales III: Modern Verse Translation collection.

Many masters employed the form of the sonnet, including Petrarch, Spenser, Shakespeare, Keats, and Robert Bridges. However, the most celebrated, and oft quoted, examples are to be found in the collection by Shakespeare, first published in 1609. In the 154 poems, Shakespeare surveys and dissects the subject of love in all its guises, and its relationship with youth, age, illness, death, and memory.

The 98-stanza meter-and-rhyme translation of "Legenda Luceafarului" - an entrancing masterpiece by Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), the Romanian national poet - captures the essence of the original work's musicality and poetic nuance. It is the story of a young princess' longing and impossible love for the immortal star who, sharing her love, takes human form and tries to become mortal.

The Georgics was published in 29 BCE, and is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil. Its a fascinating insight into rural life and farming of the time.

This is a story from the Chilling Ghost Stories collection. The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe, tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness. First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere.

The origins, history and authorship of Beowulf are shrouded in uncertainty. This heroic epic probably began, as most do, with a wandering troubadour strumming a stringed instrument, sitting before a hearth-fire, and singing the verses to a spellbound audience arrayed before him. Beowulf is a rousing adventure story, filled with intrepid heroes, monsters and fire-breathing dragons, which can be listened to for the sheer enjoyment of the tale.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales II: Modern Verse Translation collection.

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. Originally published in 1667 in ten books and later revised to twelve, here Anthony Quayle reads book 1 and book 4.

Drum-Taps is a collection of poetry written by Walt Whitman during the American Civil War and first published in 1865. Drum-Taps contains poems that bear witness to the violence of war.

Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war between cousins - the Pandavas and the Kouravas - but the Mahabharata is about conflicts of dharma. These conflicts are immense and various, singular and commonplace. Throughout the epic, characters face them with no clear indications of what is right and what is wrong; there are no absolute answers. Thus every possible human emotion features in the Mahabharata, the reason the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination.

Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war between cousins - the Pandavas and the Kouravas - but the Mahabharata is about conflicts of dharma. These conflicts are immense and various, singular and commonplace. Throughout the epic, characters face them with no clear indications of what is right and what is wrong; there are no absolute answers. Thus every possible human emotion features in the Mahabharata, the reason the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination.

"Ex Oblivione" is a prose poem by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in late 1920 or early 1921 and first published in The United Amateur in March 1921, under the pseudonym Ward Phillips. It is written in first person and tells of the dreams of a presumably dying man. In his dreams, the man is walking through a valley and encounters a vine-covered wall with a locked bronze gate therein. He longs to know what lies beyond the gate.

The Paradiso is a culminating aspect of a journey from Inferno to Paradiso, and it is also Dante’s vision of the variety, the paradoxes, and the wonder that human beings have any existence at all. The process of listening to Dante’s Comedy is a journey into not just literature but into the mysteries of human nature and its capacity for unhappiness and happiness, folly and wisdom, rejection and wonder over the miracles of creation and existence.

Spoon River Anthology is a collection of poems that describe life - and death - in a small town. Each poem is a monologue delivered by a resident of Spoon River, describing events in their lives, and the circumstances that led to their occasionally untimely end. Edgar Lee Masters wrote this theatrical masterpiece to highlight the typical small town. The fascinating characters and realistic imagery make it easy to see why this is an American classic.

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in The New York Times Review of Books hails as "a distinguished achievement." If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey though life.