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Born in 1572 in London England, John Donne is one of the most important and influential of all English poets. The child of Catholic parents at a time when Catholicism was illegal in England, Donne spent much of his life wrestling with his beliefs and trying to find his place in the world. While now regarded as one of the most famous English metaphysical poets and one of exceptional skill and brilliance, Donne published very little poetry during his own lifetime and was not a professional writer. While he inherited riches from his family, he wasted much of his fortune on mistresses and travel and struggled for his adult life to provide for his large family. Despite these obstacles, he wrote a prodigious amount of poetry and prose, much for wealthy patrons. Donne was a master of wit and irony with an unparalleled ability to create metaphors and combine two vastly different ideas or images into one. His vast legacy of poems on life, love, death, and religion, contain some of the most famous and unforgettable lines ever written in English. In this volume you will find a complete collection of John Donne’s poetical works.

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Arthur Rimbaud’s “A Season in Hell” is a prose poem loosely divided into nine parts. In one part of the poem the poet portrays quite transparently his own relationship with French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. The two had a brief alcohol and drug fueled affair which finally came to end when Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist in a drunken rage. “A Season in Hell,” which has been referred to as a pioneering example of modern symbolism, is included in this collection along with “The Drunken Boat,” a fragmented first-person narrative which vividly describes the drifting and sinking of a boat lost at sea. It is probably one of the best known works from Rimbaud’s early period. Also included in this edition is what is arguably Rimbaud’s masterpiece, “Illuminations.” A collection of forty-two poems almost all of which are in a prose format. Albert Camus hailed Rimbaud as “the poet of revolt, and the greatest.” This greatness can be readily seen in this exemplary collection of “A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat, and Illuminations”. This follows the translations of James Sibley Watson, Lionel Abel, and Wallace Fowlie.

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Farid ud-Din Attar was a Persian poet, druggist, and social theorist of Sufism, who wrote much of his poetry while treating hundreds of patients a day with his herbal remedies. As a young man he made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and sought wisdom during his travels in Egypt, Damascus, and India. His masterpiece, “The Conference of the Birds”, has survived centuries because of its captivating poetic style and its symbolic exploration on the true nature of God. This 4500-line poem follows the birds of the world, each of which hold special significance, as they seek out the Simurgh, a mythical Persian bird much like the phoenix, in hopes that he might be their king. The birds must cross seven valleys on their quest, each of which represents various trials that the individual must pass through to realize the true nature of God. Within the overlying allegory, Attar captivates readers with short, charming stories in beautiful and clever language.

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“Song of Myself”, a portion of Walt Whitman’s monumental poetry collection “Leaves of Grass”, is perhaps one of his most loved poems. Whitman is considered by many to be one of the most important and influential American poets of all time and it is the beautiful and moving “Song of Myself” that helped cement his reputation. Exhilarating, fresh, epic, and modern, the poem is at its essence an optimistic and inspirational look at the world. It is also a brilliant and fascinating study in diction and wordplay. First composed in 1855, the poem seeks to capture the unique language and meanings of words of that time, while also embracing the rapidly changing world of mid-nineteenth century America. “Song of Myself” is the essential distillation of Whitman’s poetic vision, which sought to make poetry more appealing and readable by employing a free verse style and a simple form. While it was hailed as a modern masterpiece by many critics soon after its first publication, it was also far ahead of its time and was considered scandalous and obscene for its frank depiction of human sexuality and desire. Revised over the years along with Whitman’s other works, “Song of Myself” is presented here in its final form as it appeared in the “Death-Bed” edition of “Leaves of Grass”.

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"With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion."–Edgar Allan Poe. Containing such famous works as «The Raven», «Lenore», «Annabel Lee», and «To Helen», this complete collection of poetry by Edgar Allan Poe encapsulates the career of one of the best-known and most read American writers. Laden with tones of loneliness, melancholy, and despair, the poetry contained in this volume exerted great influence on the American Romantic and the French Symbolist Movements of the nineteenth century. Today, Poe's poetry is appreciated for its literary genius, not only because of his command of language, rhythms and dramatic imagery, but also because of its emotional insight into a beautiful and tormented mind. His propensity towards the mysterious and the macabre, as well as an ardent preoccupation with death, has led centuries of scholars and readers to enjoy these poems of love, death, and loneliness. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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Set in first part of the 18th century in imperialist Russia, “Eugene Onegin” is a novel in verse, first published serially in 1825, which follows the destiny of its titular character. Eugene is a dandy, whose life involves nothing more than the social whirl of St. Petersburg, with which he has become increasingly bored. When a wealthy uncle dies he inherits a substantial fortune and a country estate where he promptly moves for a change of scenery. There he befriends his neighbor, a young, idealistic, and naive, poet named Vladimir Lensky. After attending an invitation to dinner at the home of the family of Lensky’s fiancée, Olga Larina, Eugene becomes acquainted with her younger sister Tatyana. In a letter, Tatyana confesses that she is romantically drawn to Eugene however he rebuffs her advances confessing that he would only grow bored with her after a time, a decision that he would later come to regret. Tragically suspenseful, lively, and skillfully rendered, “Eugene Onegin” has proven to be not only the favorite work of its author, but a classic of Russian literature, widely acknowledged as Alexander Pushkin’s masterpiece. This edition follows the translation of Henry Spalding.

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Relatively unknown in his own lifetime, Gerard Manley Hopkins is the now accredited as the author of some of the finest and most complex poems in the English language. As a Victorian poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, Hopkins pioneered a revolutionary form of meter he termed “sprung rhythm” in his first major work, “The Wreck of the Deutschland.” This poem, like most of Hopkins’ work, reflects both his belief in the doctrine that human beings were created to praise God as well as his commitment to the Jesuit practices of meditation and spiritual self-examination. Hopkins’ poetry is unconventional in its sensitivity to alliteration, assonance and consonance, as well as its characteristic diction and phrasing. This volume includes some of his most famous works: “Spring,” “Pied Beauty,” “God’s Grandeur,” “The Starlight Night,” “Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves,” and his most famous sonnet, “The Windhover.”

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Born on October 21, 1772 in Devonshire, England, Coleridge was a dreamy and thoughtful boy and not one for sports or rough play. When he was eight his father died and Coleridge was sent away to Christ’s Hospital, a charity school in London where stayed for the remainder of his childhood. In 1795, Coleridge met William Wordsworth and the two poets worked closely together to found the Romantic Movement in English literature. Collected together here in this representative volume are Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most popular poems. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” we find the ghostly tale of a sailor’s experience following a long voyage at sea. In “Kubla Khan” Coleridge relates an opium influenced dream of the legendary city Xanadu. In “Christabel” the story of its titular character and her encounter with a stranger named Geraldine is told. Along with these three major Coleridge compositions we find the poet’s conversation poems, a collection of eight poems which examine and reflect upon particular life experiences. The poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge endures as some of the best of the Romantic period, whose influence on later generations of poets cannot be overstated. This edition includes an introduction by Julian B. Abernethy and a biographical afterword.

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Lewis Carroll’s inventive style of poetry is brought to life in this collection of his verse “Jabberwocky and Other Poems.” As most famously illustrated in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, Carroll used his mastery of gibberish to form inventive rhymes and lexicons. Many critics have searched for meanings in his poems, but it is believed that Carroll used the nonsensical as a satire of high-poetry. Believing that many writers took themselves too seriously, he wrote “Jabberwocky”, for instance, as a way to confuse writers and critics alike. Audiences have fallen in love with Carroll’s unorthodox writing style, although there is little to say in terms of the poems’ plots, the colorful and amusing nature of Carroll’s writing draws readers into the author’s stimulating and vibrant mind. Along with selections from his volumes of poetry this collection includes verses from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” and a biographical afterword.

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This collection of poems by famous English Romantic poet William Blake comprises two volumes in one. Self-published by Blake, the first collection entitled “Songs of Innocence”, first appeared in 1789. This volume focuses on the pastoral and innocent perfection of childhood. The tone is beautiful and often delicately romantic. However there is also a dark side to the naivety of childhood. Blake explores the vulnerability of the poor and the young to the exploitation of the Industrial Age in the poems “The Chimney Sweeper” and “The Little Black Boy.” Blake expanded on this dark theme five years later when he added a second volume of poems and published the entire work in 1794 as “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” with the subtitle “Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.” The first state of being is that of the innocent and pure child. The second state is that of experience when one comes to know the true nature of human society. In this second state, one learns fear and inhibitions, changes forced by religion, the desires of the ruling class, and the pressures of society. It was Blake’s hope that readers would reject the repressive institutions of his contemporary world and instead return to a simpler more pastoral way of living, somewhere in between innocence and experience.

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