‘Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred.’ Or, to be precise and observe the line break: ‘Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred.’ This is one of several famous quotations which originated in the 1854 poem ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ written by the […]
Many famous poets have also been playwrights – consider, for starters, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, T. S. Eliot, and Oscar Wilde – and many poets have written about the experience of treading the boards. Below, we select and introduce some of the best-known and best-loved poems about the […]
Previously, we’ve selected ten classic wedding poems and ten poems to celebrate an engagement. Now, we’re turning our sights on anniversaries, especially romantic anniversaries: wedding anniversaries, anniversaries of first dates, or anniversaries celebrating the day when two lovers or close friends met.
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle steps into the yellow wood of a famous American poem Robert Frost’s two best-known poems both involve a speaker stopping in, or by, a wood: one takes place at the end of the day, in winter (his ‘Stopping by […]
Satirical poetry has a long pedigree in English literature, from the verse satires of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to contemporary poems satirising modern life. In this post, we select and introduce ten classic satirical poems in English, from the genre known as ‘the verse satire’ to more contemporary examples […]