Classic Poetry

Nine complete Dr. Seuss stories at a great price, featuring performances by Jason Alexander, Michael McKean, and David Hyde Pierce.

Juanita di Perli was a young woman when she decided to live the rest of her life on a table-top. She called it God's will, but for the order of nuns that sprang up around her, Juanita's devotion was a curse. For decades they did the bidding of the holy grouch, and the entire island of San Juan el Pirata sighed with relief when she died. Twenty years later, the islanders fight for Juanita's canonization - not because they liked her, but because a local saint would be a tourist boon. The only thing keeping the island poor is the Archduke, who refuses to ask Rome to consider Juanita for sainthood.

The status of John Donne (1572-1631) as one of the greatest poets in the English language is firmly established. He strongly influenced writers of the 17th century, and modern poets such as T.S. Eliot have praised and imitated Donne's work. His poetry is characterized by dramatic, witty, and bold language; by strikingly original imagery; and rhythms based on everyday speech.

Dante's Divine Comedy is considered to be not only the most important epic poem in Italian literature, but also one of the greatest poems ever written. It consists of 100 cantos, and (after an introductory canto) they are divided into three sections. Each section is 33 cantos in length, and they describe how Dante and a guide travel through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.

This Collection of 62 Poems by various authors including William Cowper, Thomas Kelly, Willie Mullan, Robert Murray McCheyne, Charlotte Elliott, George Herbert, Charitie Lees De Chenez and many others, has been brought together in order that these spiritual truths and impressions, presented in poetical form, will comfort and edify God's people as they wrestle daily with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Assembled from notes and jottings left unpublished at the time of the author’s death, The Book of Disquiet is a collection of aphoristic prose-poetry musings on dreams, solitude, time and memory. Credited to Pessoa’s alter ego, Bernardo Soares, who chronicles his contemplations in this so-called "factless" autobiography, the work is a journey of one man’s soul and, by extension, of all human souls that allow their minds and hearts to roam far and free.

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 40 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.

A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood. A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good. Walk further into the deep dark wood, and discover what happens when a quick-witted mouse comes face to face with an owl, a snake...and a hungry Gruffalo!

Dating to the ninth century BC, Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb Introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it coexists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace.

The Iliad is one of the most enduring creations of Western Civilization and was originally written to be recited or chanted to the accompaniment of various instruments. Properly performed, this work today is just as meaningful, just as powerful, and just as entertaining as it was in the ninth century BC, and it casts its spell upon modern listeners with the same raw intensity as it did upon the people of ancient times.

The epitome of the romantic literary hero, Lord Byron was as well known in his time for the revolutionary panache with which he lived as for his extremely popular verse. “As a myth,” wrote Bertrand Russell, “his importance, especially on the continent, was enormous.” His many tempestuous relationships were the subject of scandal which only added to his celebrity. His name has even entered into our language to describe a man of deep passion and defiance.

Robert Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey has been the standard translation for more than three generations of students and poets. Macmillan Audio is delighted to publish the first ever audio edition of this classic work, the greatest of all epic poems. Fitzgerald's supple verse is ideally suited for audio, recounting the story of Odysseus' long journey back to his wife and home after the Trojan War. Homer's tale of love, adventure, food and drink, sensual pleasure, and mortal danger reaches the English-language listener in all its glory.

One of the greatest prose writers and social commentators of the 20th century, Aldous Huxley here introduces us to a delightfully cynical, comic, and severe group of artists and intellectuals engaged in the most free-thinking and modern kind of talk imaginable. Poetry, occultism, ancestral history, and Italian primitive painting are just a few of the subjects competing for discussion among the amiable cast of eccentrics drawn together at Crome, an intensely English country manor.

Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy.

The publication of a new translation by Fagles is a literary event. His translations of both the Iliad and Odyssey have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and have become the standard translations of our era. Now, with this stunning modern verse translation, Fagles has reintroduced Virgil's Aeneid to a whole new generation, and completed the classical triptych at the heart of Western civilization.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history - Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story.

"Abandon all hope you who enter here." ( "Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch’intrate.") Dante’s Hell is one of the most remarkable visions in Western literature. An allegory for his and future ages, it is, at the same time, an account of terrifying realism. Passing under a lintel emblazoned with these frightening words, the poet is led down into the depths by Virgil and shown those doomed to suffer eternal torment for vices exhibited and sins committed on earth.

These poems have been brought together in order that these spiritual truths and impressions, presented in poetical form, will comfort and edify God's people as they wrestle daily with the world, the flesh, and the devil. To know that others have felt what we have felt, 'Through all the changing scenes of life, In trouble and in joy' to hear the feelings in our hearts echoed back to us, to be reminded of our Lord's love, will comfort the soul and bring encouragement.

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....