A Poetry-Lover’s Guide to the World-Wide Web, Pre-1950

from Homer’s Iliad (as translated by Richmond Lattimore)
The first 7 lines
Achilles’ rebuke of Agamemnon
The parting of Hector and Andromache

Sappho                  portrait ———–>
“He Is More Than A Hero” ….. more Sappho: poems ; Wikipedia

from Sophocles’ Antigone (as translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald)
Ode 1 (“Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none / More wonderful than man;..”)

from The Bible (King James version)
The 23rd Psalm (“The Lord is my shepherd;…”)
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (“To everything there is a season,…”)

Sappho

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
[Shakespeare’s greatest poetry is in his plays, but since it suffers considerably when removed from context, I have included only the one selection (from Macbeth).]
Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds…”)
Sonnet 147 (“My love is as a fever longing still,…”)
from Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5 (“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,…”)
…(more Shakespeare: complete works; his life & times; Shakespeare on the Internet; shakespeare.about.com; britannica.com.)

Aphra Behn (1640-1689)            portrait—————>
“Love Armed” (“Love in Fantastic Triumph sate,…”) …..(more Behn)

Aphra Behn

Anonymous
“The Water Is Wide”

William Blake (1757-1827)
“The Tyger” ….. (more Blake: at poetry.org ,… The luring songs of Luvah )

Robert Burns (1759-1796)
“O my Luve is like a red, red rose” …..(more Burns)

Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Excerpts from Moby-Dick …..(more Melville)

                                photo ———->

Herman Melville

      Sullivan and Sarah Ballou

Ernest Lawrence Thayer (1863–1940)
“Casey at the Bat”

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
….. The Heart of the Woman (“O what to me the little room…”)

….. Adam’s Curse (“We sat together at one summer’s end…”)

….. The Lake Isle of Innisfree (“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree…”)

….. The Folly of Being Comforted (“One that is ever kind said yesterday…”)

….. Never Give All the Heart (“Never give all the heart, for love…”)

….. When You Are Old (“When you are old and grey and full of sleep…”)

….. Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop (“I met the bishop on the road…”)

….. The Circus Animals’ Desertion (“I sought a theme and sought for it in vain…”)

…..  Collected Poems;

….. Three books on bartleby.com:  The Wind Among the Reeds;  Responsibilities and Other Poems;  The Wild Swans at Coole

….. Bibliography   

                               W.B. Yeats

Charlotte Mew (1869-1928)
“In These Fields” …..(more Mew)

Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
“Patterns” …..(more Lowell)

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
“The Neighbor”
“The Buddha in the Glory” …..{more Rilke (Wikipedia)}

Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)
“An Old Man”
“Ithaka” …..(more Cavafy)

Arthur Symons (1865-1945)
“Stella Maris”

Arthur Symons

                             Robert Frost              

W. H. Auden (1907-1973)
“Musee de Beaux Arts”
“In Memory of W. B. Yeats”
“Funeral Blues” …..(more Auden)

Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982)
“The End of the World”

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
from The Caucasian Chalk Circle (translated by Eric Bentley) ….. (Brecht info)

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
“And Death Shall Have No Dominion” ………. photo, a young Dylan Thomas –>
“A Refusal to Mourn the Death of a Child, by Fire, in London”
“This Side of the Truth”
…..(more Thomas)

a young Dylan Thomas

 

 

Robert Graves (1895-1985)                                           photo —————->
Dedication to The White Goddess …..{more Graves (Wikipedia)}

Eli Siegel (1902-1978)
The Dark That Was Is Here …..Article about Siegel and Edna Millay

Update record:

Graves added, 9/10/98.
more Sappho”, “more Behn”, “more Millay” links changed, 4/17/1999.
more Dickenson”, “more Lowell” links changed, 6/26/1999.
more Brecht” link changed, 8/31/1999.
A number of links corrected, 10/4/2000.
more Rilke” added; more corrections, 01/08/2001.
more Shakespeare”; Blake; and “more Graves” links changed, 09/02/2001.
Symons and Robinson links updated, 12/23/2001.
Link to “Lucius’ 21 favorite Millay poems” added 02/04/2002.
Tyger, Stella Maris, Peter Quince links changed 07/13/2002.
more Sappho”, “more Lowell”, “more Thomas” links changed 11/03/2002.
more Behn” link changed (emory.edu site not working) 01/11/2004.
more Rilke, Robinson, Frost, Eliot” links changed, 12/27/2005.
various links changed, 04/21/2006; various links changed, 09/04/2006; links corrected, 12/23/2006;
added Eli Siegel, 8/1/2008;
links corrected, 6/1/2009;
link corrected to “Let me not to the marriage of true minds…”, 05/12/2012
Acquainted with the Night” link corrected, “Shakespeare on the Internet” added, 01/27/2014
more Graves” link changed, 01/27/2014
Complete Shakespeare link corrected, Sullivan Ballou link changed, 01/23/2015
links corrected to Lucius’ 21 favorite Millay; Millay/Shalizi, 06/26/2015
added “Casey at the Bat”, 04/02/2016
reformatted page; added nine photos, 07/10/2017
changed links for Ballou and “Stella Maris”, 10/21/2018
changed links for Charlotte Mew, 12/24/2018
corrected link for Siegel/Millay article, 9/7/2019
changed link for “The Soul Selects Her Own Society”, 

changed defunct bartleby.com links to 2 Shakespeare sonnets, 2 Dickinson poems, and 3 Yeats books to working links, 2/28/2023