Set between references to classical myth, today’s new poem uses a captive swan to summon up the anguish of those who have lost something irreplaceable in Baudelaire’s poem mourning the destruction of the old city of Paris. Hear the French and follow in English here, and see the illustrated blog post here.

The latest in Pantheon Poets’ sequence of ancient and modern poems about swans is W B Yeats’s “The Wild Swans at Coole”. Hear it read by Harry McFarland here and see the illustrated blog post here.

In an age when timekeeping was vastly less detailed but no less accurate about essentials, Virgil’s poem about farming, the Georgics, explains how the stars will tell you when to plant.

Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here; see the illustrated blog post here.