In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle considers Housman’s poem about the defeat of the Spartans ’Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain When winds were in the oakenshaws and all the cauldrons tolled, And mute’s the midland navel-stone beside the […]
Change is a topic that has fascinated poets for many centuries, whether it’s literal or physical metamorphosis (which the Roman poet Ovid wrote a whole epic poem about), a change in social attitudes, or the way lovers in a relationship change in their affections. Below, we introduce ten of the […]
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is one of the best-known and most widely analysed poems by John Keats (1795-1821); it is also, perhaps, the most famous of his five Odes which he composed in 1819, although ‘To Autumn’ gives it a run for its money. The best way to analyse […]