Archives: Poets
Archilochus
c, 680 - c. 640 BCE
An early poet who based his work on experience of warfare and personal life.
Archilochus 7
Archilochus on endurance
κήδεα μὲν στονόεντα, Περίκλεες, οὔτε τις ἀστῶν
Tough love from Archilochus on loss and mourning
Archilochus fragments 2, 3 5A and 6
Archilochus, a soldier-poet
ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε, σὺν κώθωνι θοῆς διὰ σέλματα νηὸς
Archilochus on campaign
Arnold
1822 - 1888
Matthew Arnold, the great 19th century English poet, author of "Dover Beach" and "The Scholar Gypsy".
Dover Beach
The sea is calm tonight
A bleak but beautiful reflection on 19th-century life by Matthew Arnold.
Boethius
c. 480 - 524 CE
Boethius was a sixth-century statesman and scholar who met a cruel death on suspicion of treason, but whose writings were hugely influential during the middle ages.
The Consolation of Philosophy 4. 6. lines 1 - 18
Some things never change
Si vis celsi tonantis iura pura sollers cernere mente
Boethius's reminder that some things never change
Callimachus
c 310 - 240 BCE
Callimachus, a great poet in his own right, was also a scholar at the Library of Alexandria, the most important of the ancient classical world.
Callimachus Epigram 2
Callimachus remembers his poet-friend
εἶπέ τις Ἡράκλειτε τεὸν μόρον
The poet Callimachus remembers his poet-friend Heraclitus
Catullus
84BC - 54BC
The first of the Big Four to write was Catullus. He was reportedly born in 84 BCE in Verona, but spent much of his adult life in Rome, and died young in about 54 BCE, ten years before the death of Julius Caesar. References in the poems suggest that he spent a year abroad at some point on the staff of the Governor of the Province of Bithynia, near the Bosphorus and Black Sea in modern Turkey.
Catullus 1
Catullus dedicates his little book
cui dono lepidum novum libellum
Catullus begins with a dedication
Catullus 3
Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque
Lugete, o Venerese Cupidinesque
A lament for Lesbia's sparrow
Catullus 6
The wayfaring bedstead
Flavi, delicias tuas Catullo
Catullus asks his friend awkward questions
Catullus 11
Catullus and the end of the affair
Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli
Catullus's bitter farewell to his mistress
Catullus 16
Constructive criticism welcome
pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo
Catullus holds his ground with the critics
Catullus 17
Marriage guidance from Catullus
O Colonia, quae cupis ponto ludere longo
An older man takes a young wife
Catullus 101
Catullus’s farewell to his brother
Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
Catullus mourns his loss
Chapman
1559 - 1634
George Chapman was an English dramatist and translator. His translations of Homer were praised in a famous sonnet by Keats "On first looking into Chapman's Homer"
Opening lines from Homer’s Odyssey
The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way
The first lines of the Odyssey, translated by George Chapman in a version admired by Keats
Charles Baudelaire
1821 - 1847
Great French poet and author of Les fleurs du Mal ("Flowers of Evil")
Clough
1819-61
Arthur Hugh Clough was an attractive poet who expressed healthy scepticism about the public ethics of the Victorian period and wrote movingly about friendship and the pain of estrangement.
Say not the trouble nought availeth
Say not the trouble nought availeth
Optimism and self-help from this principled poet of the Victorian era
