Today’s new poem is by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It is a tribute to Virgil on the 1,900th anniversary of his death and is an example of how deeply great European writers have been steeped in and influenced by Latin poetry. One of the aims of Pantheon Poets is to give you a better experience of Latin poems recited in the original than translations can provide, even if you don’t know Latin yourself.
Tennyson combines his admiration for Milton’s poetry with his love of ancient poetry, and in particular his love of Alcaics, the Greek metre that Horace used for his loftiest themes in the Odes. You can decide for yourself how far the experiment succeeds, and use the links to compare Tennyson’s poem to some of Horace’s poems in the same metre, here.
