Who are the most important western poets of all time?

[Frostball]

Who are the most important western poets? I'd like to know what people think, because I know very little about poetry, western or otherwise, and I'm curious what names people think are the most important and influential in poetry. I only put a focus on western poetry because I'm an american, and am very much infused with western culture, I will admit, and I am new to poetry so I feel I would find it much easier to first get into poetry that I would understand easier.

From poetry I've read I understand that a lot of it seems to refer to poetic ideas and tropes that come from other poets and works that came previous. I'm looking for poets that are perhaps the most referenced in this way, and the most influenced poetry so that by reading these poets I can learn to pick up on these poetic ideas and tropes. Maybe this is the wrong way to go--I don't know, I'm a novice.

I know definite lists are impossible, so I don't expect any exact top 10 poets that a person MUST read kind of thing. I wouldn't be opposed to a top 10 format if somebody wishes to do so, however.

[stlukesguild]

Among the poets that I would include as having the greatest impact upon the traditions of Western poetry, I would include:

Sappho
Homer
Ovid
Virgil
Dante
Petrarch
Ludovico Ariosto
Torquato Tasso
Pierre de Ronsard
Joachim Du Bellay
Jean de La Fontaine
Chaucer
Edmund Spenser
Shakespeare
John Donne
Milton
Alexander Pope
San Juan de la Cruz
Francisco de Quevedo
Luis de Góngora
William Blake
Lord Byron
Samuel Coleridge
William Wordsworth
Percy B. Shelley
John Keats
Goethe
Novalis
Holderlin
Heinrich Heine
Alexander Pushkin
Ugo Foscolo
Giacomo Leopardi
Robert Browning
Lord Tennyson
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
R.W. Emerson
Steven Crane
Herman Melville
Victor Hugo
Gérard de Nerval
Charles Baudelaire
Théophile Gautier
Stéphane Mallarmé
Paul Velaine
Arthur Rimbaud
Paul Valéry
Gabriele D'Annunzio
W.B. Yeats
Thomas Hardy
E.A. Poe
Antonio Machado
Rafael Alberti
Federico García Lorca
Guillaume Apollinaire
Paul Éluard
Ranier Maria Rilke
Miguel Hernández
T.S. Eliot
Wallace Stevens
Hart Crane
Robert Frost
Anna Akhmatova
Marina Tsvetaeva
Boris Pasternak
Eugenio Montale
Pablo Neruda
Paul Celan
Fernado Pessoa
Cesar Vallejo
Octavio Paz
W.H. Auden
Geoffrey Hill
Anne Carson

Since you admit to being American, I padded out the American poets a bit more than I would otherwise.

[mortalterror]

1.Dante- The Divine Comedy
In fashion then as of a snow-white rose
Displayed itself to me the saintly host,
Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride,

But the other host, that flying sees and sings
The glory of Him who doth enamour it,
And the goodness that created it so noble,

Even as a swarm of bees, that sinks in flowers
One moment, and the next returns again
To where its labour is to sweetness turned,

Sank into the great flower, that is adorned
With leaves so many, and thence reascended
To where its love abideth evermore.

Their faces had they all of living flame,
And wings of gold, and all the rest so white
No snow unto that limit doth attain.

2.Shakespeare- Hamlet, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet
LUCIUS
Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?
AARON
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day--and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,--
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

3.Homer- The Iliad, The Odyssey
Now the stout heart of Ajax cared no longer
to stay where others had withdrawn; he moved
with long strides on the ships' decks, making play
with his long plished pike, the sections joined
by rivets, long as twenty-two forearms.
Think of an expert horseman, who has harnessed
a double team together from his string
and rides them from the plain to a big town
along the public road, where many see him,
men and women both; with perfect ease,
he changed horses, leaping, at a gallup.
That was Ajax, going from deck to deck
of many ships with his long stride, his shout
rising to heaven, as in raging tones
he ordered the Danaans to defend them.

6.Virgil- The Aeneid
Truly we found here a prodigious fight,
As though there were none elsewhere, not a death
In the whole city: Mars gone berserk, Danaans
In a rush to scale the roof; the gate besieged
By a tortoise shell of overlapping shields.
Ladders clung to the wall, and men strove upward
Before the very doorposts, on the rungs,
Left hand putting the shield up, and the right
Reaching for the cornice. The defenders
Wrenched out upperworks and rooftiles: these
For missiles, as they saw the end, preparing
To fight back even on the edge of death.
And gilded beams, ancestral ornaments,
They rolled down on the heads below. In hall
Others with swords drawn held the entrance way,
Packed there, waiting. Now we plucked up heart
To help the royal house, to give our men
A respite, and to add our strength to theirs,
Though all were beaten. And we had for entrance
A rear door, secret, giving on a passage
Between the palace halls; in other days
Andromache, poor lady, often used it,
Going alone to see her husband's parents
Or taking Astyanax to his grandfather.
I climbed high on the roof, where hopeless men
Were picking up and throwing futile missiles.
Here was a tower like a promontory
Rising toward the stars above the roof:
All Troy, the Danaan ships, the Achaen camp,
Were visible from this. Now close beside it
With crowbars, where the flooring made loose joints,
We pried it from its bed and pushed it over.
Down with a rending crash in sudden ruin
Wide over the Danaan lines it fell;
But fresh troops moved up, and the rain of stones
With every kind of missile never ceased.

7.Ovid- The Metamorphoses, The Amores, The Heroides,
Penelope to the tardy Ulysses:
do not answer these lines, but come, for
Troy is dead and the daughters of Greece rejoice.
But all of Troy and Priam himself
are not worth the price I've paid for victory.
How often I have wished that Paris
had drowned before he reached our welcoming shores.
If he had died I would not have been
compelled now to sleep alone in my cold bed
complaining always of the tiresome
prospect of endless nights and days spent working
like a poor widow at my tedious loom.
Imagining hazards more awful than real,
love has always been tempered by fear:
I was sure it was you the Trojans attacked
and the name of Hector made me pale;
if someone told the tale of Antilochus
I dreamed of you dead as he had died;
if they sang of the death of Menoetius' son,
slain in armour not his own, I wept,
because even clever tricks had failed

8.Tasso- Jerusalem Delivered
I sing the reverent armies, and that Chief
who set the great tomb of our Savior free;
much he performed with might and judgement, much
he suffered in the glorious victory;
in vain Hell rose athwart his path, in vain
two continents combined in mutiny.
Heaven graced him with it's favor, and restored
his straying men to the banner of the Lord.

O Muse, who do not string a garland of
the fading laurel fronds of Helicon,
but far in heaven among the blessed choirs
wreathe deathless stars into a golden crown
breathe into my heart the fire of Heavenly love,
illuminate my song and if I have sewn
embroideries of the truth in any place,
I ask forgiveness for their lesser grace.

9.Milton- Paradise Lost
horror and doubt distract
His troubl'd thoughts, and from the bottom stirr
The Hell within him, for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step no more then from himself can fly
By change of place:

11.Aeschylus-Agamemnon
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget,
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom, through the awful grace of God.

12.Baudelaire- Flowers of Evil
Folly and error, stinginess and sin
Possess our spirits and fatigue our flesh.
And like a pet we feed our tame remorse
As beggars take to nourishing their lice.

Our sins are stubborn, our contrition lax;
We offer lavishly our vows of faitb
And turn back gladly to tbe path of filth,
Thinking mean tears will wash away our stains.

On evil's pillow lies the alchemist
Satan Thrice-Great, who lulls our captive soul,
And all the richest metal of our will
Is vaporized by his hermetie arts.

Truly tbe Devil pulls on all our strings!
In most repugnant objects we find charms;
Each day we're one step furtber into Hell,
Content to move across tbe stinking pit.

As a poor libertine will suck and kiss
The sad, tormented tit of some old whore,
We steal a furtive pleasure as we pass,
A shrivelled orange that we squeeze and press.

Close, swarming, like a million writhing worms,
A demon nation riots in our brains,
And, when we breathe, death flows into our lungs,
A secret stream of dull, lamenting cries.

15.Jean Racine- Phaedra, Andromache, Athalia
PYLADES: What, is it true? Your soul a slave to love,
you are thrown upon its mercy? By what charm,
forgetting so much agony endured,
could you consent to wear those irons again?
Do you suppose Hermione, cold in Sparta,
waits burning in Epirus? Well ashamed
to have persisted in such useless prayers,
you hated her, you spoke no more of her.
Sir, you deceived me.
ORESTES: I deceived myself.

16.T.S. Eliot- The Wasteland
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

18.Leopardi- Idylls
I've always loved this lonesome hill
And this hedge that hides
The entire horizon, almost, from sight.
But sitting here in a daydream, I picture
The boundless spaces away out there, silences
Deeper than human silence, an unfathomable hush
In which my heart is hardly a beat
From fear. And hearing the wind
Rush rustling through these bushes,
I pit its speech against infinite silence-
And a notion of eternity floats to mind,
And the dead seasons, and the season
Beating here and now, and the sound of it. So,
In this immensity my toughts all drown;
And it's easeful to be wrecked in seas like these.

19.Coleridge- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.

And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so:
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

20.Lucan- Pharsalia
Tyrrhenus high
Upon the bulwarks of his ship was struck
By leaden bolt from Balearic sling
Of Lygdamus; straight through his temples passed
The fated missile; and in streams of blood
Forced from their seats his trembling eyeballs fell.
Plunged in a darkness as of night, he thought
That life had left him; yet ere long he knew
The living rigour of his limbs; and cried,
"Place me, O friends, as some machine of war
Straight facing towards the foe; then shall my darts
Strike as of old; and thou, Tyrrhenus, spend
Thy latest breath, still left, upon the fight:
So shalt thou play, not wholly dead, the part
That fits a soldier, and the spear that strikes
Thy frame, shall miss the living." Thus he spake,
And hurled his javelin, blind, but not in vain;
For Argus, generous youth of noble blood,
Below the middle waist received the spear
And falling drave it home. His aged sire
From furthest portion of the conquered ship
Beheld; than whom in prime of manhood none,
More brave in battle: now no more he fought,
Yet did the memory of his prowess stir
Phocaean youths to emulate his fame.
Oft stumbling o'er the benches the old man hastes
To reach his boy, and finds him breathing still.
No tear bedewed his cheek, nor on his breast
One blow he struck, but o'er his eyes there fell
A dark impenetrable veil of mist
That blotted out the day; nor could he more
Discern his luckless Argus.He, who saw
His parent, raising up his drooping head
With parted lips and silent features asks
A father's latest kiss, a father's hand
To close his dying eyes. But soon his sire,
Recovering from his swoon, when ruthless grief
Possessed his spirit, "This short space," he cried,
"I lose not, which the cruel gods have given,
But die before thee. Grant thy sorrowing sire
Forgiveness that he fled thy last embrace.
Not yet has passed thy life blood from the wound
Nor yet is death upon thee -- still thou may'st
Outlive thy parent." Thus he spake, and seized
The reeking sword and drave it to the hilt,
Then plunged into the deep, with headlong bound,
To anticipate his son: for this he feared
A single form of death should not suffice

[mortalterror]

21.Wordsworth- The Prelude
I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of dancing Daffodils;
Along the Lake, beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee: --
A poet could not but be gay
In such a laughing company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

22.Shelley- Lyrics and Odes
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

23.Petrarch- Canzoniere
And what is life itself? A space of toil,
A wrestling, a stage-play, a labyrinth
Of errors, or a game of mountebanks,
A desert, a morass, a land of briers,
An unploughed valley, or a crest unclomb:
Sombre its caves, and what wild beasts dwell there!
There is the stream of tears, the sea of woes,
Rest ever anxious, labour all for naught,
Hope without fruit, false pleasure but true pain,
Full breadth of poverty but empty wealth,
Inglorious honour, waste of all desire,
Adversity with never-stayned complaint,
The sting in all enjoyment, and the sweet,
Alas, not seldom bitter; a brief halt
At wayside inns; a dirty prison; a ship
Without a rudder; a blind man unled;
A stormy sea, a dangerous coast, a port
All doubtful,--with no dearth of monstrous wreck;
Hate, lust, and anger, virtue aye assumed,
Successful fraud labelled with honour's name,
Innocence scoffed at, faith held up to scorn,
And puffed-up science that no science is;
A land of ghosts and spectres, 'neath the reign
Of Lucifer and demons; or a sleep
Death ends and every dream. But yet some way
Remains, thank heaven, to good life, and hereafter
Unto the eternal.

24.Yeats- The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

25.Tennyson- Ulysses
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

26.Ezra Pound- Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Make-strong old dreams lest this our wold lose heart.

For man is a skinfull of wine
But his soul is a hole full of God
And the song of all time blows thru him
As wind thru a knot-holed board.

Tho man be a skin full of wine
Yet his heart is a little child
That croucheth low beneath the wind
When the God-storm battereth wild.

27.Robert Frost- Mending Wall, The Road Less Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

28.John Donne- Works
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

29.John Wilmot- The Farce of Sodom
Much wine had passed, with grave discourse
Of who ****s who, and who does worse
(Such as you usually do hear
From those that diet at the Bear),
When I, who still take care to see
Drunkenness relieved by lechery,
Went out into St. James's Park
To cool my head and fire my heart.
But though St. James has th' honor on 't,
'Tis consecrate to prick and ****.
There, by a most incestuous birth,
Strange woods spring from the teeming earth;
For they relate how heretofore,
When ancient Pict began to ****,
Deluded of his assignation
(Jilting, it seems, was then in fashion),
Poor pensive lover, in this place
Would frig upon his mother's face;
Whence rows of mandrakes tall did rise
Whose lewd tops ****ed the very skies.

30.Statius- The Thebaid
The horses match their masters' fire: eyes flash,
Teeth grind and bloody foam corrodes the bits.
Their pressure almost bursts the starting-gates
As in their thwarted rage they snort and steam.
To stand's such torture, countless steps are lost
Before the start and hooves pound down the course
That's still to come. The faithful grooms stand by,
Adjusting harness, smoothing tangled manes,
With words of courage, wealth of good advice.
The trumpet sounded and away they all
Hurtled. What sails at sea, what spears in war,
What clouds across the sky, can fly so fast?
Weaker are winter spates and forest fires,
Slower shoot stars, slower fall sheets of rain,
Slower rush cataracts from mountain peaks.

31.Ruben Dario- To Roosevelt
You think that life is fire,
that progress is eruption,
that wherever you shoot
you hit the future.

No.

The United States is potent and great.
When you shake there is a deep tremblor
that passes through the enormous vertebrae of the Andes.
If you clamor, it is heard like the roaring of a lion.
Hugo already said it to Grant: The stars are yours.
(The Argentine sun, ascending, barely shines,
and the Chilean star rises...) You are rich.
You join the cult of Hercules to the cult of Mammon,
and illuminating the road of easy conquest,
Liberty raises its torch in New York.

32.Constantine P. Cavafy- Ithaca, The Horses of Achilles
When they saw Patroklos dead
—so brave and strong, so young—
the horses of Achilles began to weep;
their immortal nature was upset deeply
by this work of death they had to look at.
They reared their heads, tossed their long manes,
beat the ground with their hooves, and mourned
Patroklos, seeing him lifeless, destroyed,
now mere flesh only, his spirit gone,
defenseless, without breath,
turned back from life to the great Nothingness.
*
Zeus saw the tears of those immortal horses and felt sorry.
“At the wedding of Peleus,” he said,
“I should not have acted so thoughtlessly.
Better if we hadn’t given you as a gift,
my unhappy horses. What business did you have down there,
among pathetic human beings, the toys of fate.
You are free of death, you will not get old,
yet ephemeral disasters torment you.
Men have caught you up in their misery.”
But it was for the eternal disaster of death
that those two gallant horses shed their tears.

33.John Keats- Endymion
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

38.Victor Hugo- The Expiation
It snowed. Someone was defeated by his conquering.
For the first time, the eagle lowered its head.
Heavy days! The emperor came back slowly,
Letting Moscow in smoke burn behind him.
It snowed. The sharp winter came upon one, tumblingly.
After that white plain, another white plain.
Unrecognized now, chiefs and banners.
Yesterday la grande armée and now a flock of something.
Wings and centre were no longer told apart.
It snowed. The wounded hid themselves in the bellies
Of dead horses; at the edge of deserted encampments
You might see trumpeters frozen to their post,
Remaining upright, caparisoned and still, white in frost,
Sticking their stony mouths to trumpets of copper.
Bullets, grapeshot, shells, mixed with white flakes,
Fell down; grenadiers, surprised that they were trembling,
Marched in thought, ice at their grey moustaches.
It snowed. It snowed always! The cold wind
Whistled. A surface of frozen rain, in some dim place—
Men walked on this with bare feet and without food.
These were no longer living hearts, folk of war.
It was a dream wandering in cold haze, a mystery,
A procession of shades under a black sky.
The vast loneliness, fearful to look at,
Everywhere appeared: a mute avenger.

39.Goethe- Faust
All was void, and mute, and still,
God's first taste of solitude.
Then he made the rose of dawn,
Pity on the pain she strewed,
So inventing for the dark,
Of hues and harmonies a game,
And everything that fell apart
Now could fall in love again.

40.Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they
were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.

[mortalterror]

42.Ronsard- When You Are Truly Old
When you are truly old, beside the evening candle,
Sitting by the fire, winding wool and spinning,
Murmuring my verses, you’ll marvel then, in saying,
‘Long ago, Ronsard sang me, when I was beautiful.’

There’ll be no serving-girl of yours, who hears it all,
Even if, tired from toil, she’s already drowsing,
Fails to rouse at the sound of my name’s echoing,
And blesses your name, then, with praise immortal.

I’ll be under the earth, a boneless phantom,
At rest in the myrtle groves of the dark kingdom:
You’ll be an old woman hunched over the fire,

Regretting my love for you, your fierce disdain,
So live, believe me: don’t wait for another day,
Gather them now the roses of life, and desire.

43.Wyatt- They Flee From Me
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

44.Alexander Pope- Essay on Man
Let Sporus tremble –"What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ***'s milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?"
Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys,

46.Joachim du Bellay- The Regrets
If I climb to the Palace, I find only pride,
Vice disguised, nothing but ceremony,
The noise of tambourines, strange harmony,
And red robes flowing in a crimson tide:

If I go down to the bank, I’m well supplied
With novelty, new faces, infinite usury,
Rich exiled Florentines, are there, in plenty,
And the poor Siennese, to grief allied:

If I wander, somewhere I’m bound to pass
The hordes of Venus, in lascivious mass,
Flaunting a thousand amorous charms the while:

If from new Rome I resolve to cross over
And enter the old Rome, there I discover
Only dead monuments, a vast stony pile.

47.Francois de Malherbe- Consolation for Mr. du Perier
I know that her childhood was full of charms,
and I have not undertaken,
furious friend, to relieve your pain
with scorn.

But she was of this world,
where the most beautiful things
have the worst fate;
and, a rose, she lived as roses live,
the space of a morning.

48.Aneirin- Y Gododdin
Man's mettle, youth's years, courage for combat:
Swift thick-maned stallions beneath a fine stripling's thighs,
Broad lightweight buckler on a slim steed's crupper,
Glittering blue blades, gold-bordered garments.
Never will there be bitterness between us:
Rather I make of you song that will praise you.
The blood-soaked field before the marriage-feast,
Foodstuff for crows before the burial.
A dear comrade, Owain; vile, his cover of crows.
Ghastly to me that ground, slain, Marro's only son.

49.George Herbert- The Temple
Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:

With Thee
O let me rise,
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day Thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne;
And still with sicknesses and shame
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.

With Thee
Let me combine,
And feel this day Thy victorie;
For, if I imp my wing on Thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

50.Andrew Marvell- To His Coy Mistress
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

52.William Blake- Songs of Innocence and of Experience
"O little Cloud," the virgin said, "I charge thee tell to me,
Why thou complainest not when in one hour thou fade away:
Then we shall seek thee but not find; ah, Thel is like to Thee.
I pass away, yet I complain, and no one hears my voice."

The Cloud then shew'd his golden head & his bright form emerg'd,
Hovering and glittering on the air before the face of Thel.

"O virgin, know'st thou not our steeds drink of the golden springs
Where Luvah doth renew his horses? Look'st thou on my youth,
And fearest thou because I vanish and am seen no more,
Nothing remains? O maid, I tell thee, when I pass away,
It is to tenfold life, to love, to peace, and raptures holy:
Unseen descending, weigh my light wings upon balmy flowers,
And court the fair eyed dew, to take me to her shining tent:
The weeping virgin trembling kneels before the risen sun,
Till we arise link'd in a golden band, and never part,
But walk united, bearing food to all our tender flowers."

53.Robert Burns- A Red, Red Rose
O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only Luve
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile.

55.Byron- So We'll Go No More A'roving
So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

56.Heinrich Heine- Book of Songs
I don't believe in Heaven,
Whose peace the preacher cites:
I only trust your eyes now,
They're my heavenly lights.

I don't believe in God above,
Who gets the preacher's nod:
I only trust your heart now,
And have no other god.

I don't believe in Devils,
In hell or hell's black art:
I only trust your eyes now,
And your devil's heart.

57.Lermontov- The Demon
A SPIRIT fallen from the realms of light
Above this dim world winged his weary flight,
For memories came crowding thick and fast
Of vanished splendours and delights long past. —
How erst, a Cherub bright, he loved to race
With fiery comets through the fields of space;
No mists could blind, no clouds his progress bar,
He followed knowledge on from star to star.
Creation's heir, the first-born of all time,
He loved, he trusted in that happy prime.

58.Poe- The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

59.Robert Browning- My Last Duchess and other dramatic Lyrics
She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop.

60.Janos Arany- Toldi
Unbidden then, among the men,
There comes a dauntless third
With speech of fire he tunes his lyre,
And bitter is his word:

"Our bravest died to slake your pride -
Proud Edward, hear my lays!
No Welsh bards live who e'er will give
Your name a song a praise.

"Our harps with dead men's memories weep.
Welsh bards to you will sing
One changeless verse - our blackest curse
To blast your soul, O king!"

59.Dionysios Solomos- The Shark
Now downward and near wheels the golden-winged
that quickly left its branch for the rocky shore
and there takes in beauties of sea and sky,
and there heaves its voice with all its magic,
harmonizing sea with desolate stone,
and calls out the late night star that must rise.
Birdie, airing your voice of miracles,
if your marvelous song is not pure bliss,
nothing good has flowered here or in heaven.
Oh, if one stroke could get me where I'd go,
sea-foam, keep me afloat till my return,
with mother's kiss, native earth in my fist.

60.Elizabeth Barrett Browning- Sonnets from the Portuguese
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

[Pierre Menard]

…I think mortal and stlukes have got it pretty covered.

Quick question for you, Mortal, what is your preferred translation of Statius and Lucan? I'm planning to read them at some point over the coming 12 months, so just thought I'd ask.

[prendrelemick]

Follow the pentameter back to its origins and there you will find the most influential poets of western poetry. Perhaps it is the form that suits our branch of The Indo-European languages the best.

Otherwise, Shakespeare.

[Oedipus]

Wolf Larson, Wolf Larson, Wolf Larson

[Frostball]

Wow! First off, StLukes that is a great, long list.

I also really liked Mortal's selections. I read all of them, and enjoyed it.

I knew just a few of them already, particularly Tennyson's Ulysses which I love and was one of the first poems that really showed me the kind of awesomeness and feeling that can come from a poem. It's so life affirming at the end, it reminds me of another Ulysses' end "Yes, I said yes, I will yes". The endings aren't really similar, but it evokes a similar feeling in me anyway.

But most of them I didn't know. I really liked Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, and it's dark sinister imagery. Also I recently read the Iliad, and never quite realized how cool that one Ajax part was. Blake is one poet I've already read a bit of, and enjoy, but I hadn't read the one featured here. The same thing goes for Keats. Ezra Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley confused me while making me feel like I understood something.

All in all there was too much for me to remember each one distinctly. I'll have to read them all again sometime, and again. Thanks very much for your time and effort, both Stlukes and Mortal.

[illiterati]

for a shorter and more idiosyncratic list--

Homer
Sappho
Virgil
Catullus
The Psalmist
Dante
Shakespeare
Whitman
Pound
Ginsberg

[desiresjab]

"Who are the most important western poets of all time?"

The ones who are read the most. How else could a poet still be important? The more they are read the more important they are. Unless they are read they can no longer have any influence. Your question is easy to answer. Just follow the reputation, friend, and you will not go wrong.

[JCamilo]

Mortal forgot Lope :yikes:

[Poetaster]

Everything I was going to say has already been said on this thread. Mortalterror has produced one of the best, most comprehensive lists of the great poets that I've ever seen in my life.

[mortalterror]

…I think mortal and stlukes have got it pretty covered.

Quick question for you, Mortal, what is your preferred translation of Statius and Lucan? I'm planning to read them at some point over the coming 12 months, so just thought I'd ask.

For Statius' Thebaid I enjoy A.D. Melville quite a bit. There are actually two good translators of Lucan's Pharsalia or Civil War: one by Sir Edward Ridley. You'll find that one online at OMACL, and the other one which Everyman's library uses was translated by Nicholas Rowe.

[Poetaster]

For Statius' Thebaid I enjoy A.D. Melville quite a bit. There are actually two good translators of Lucan's Pharsalia or Civil War: one by Sir Edward Ridley. You'll find that one online at OMACL, and the other one which Everyman's library uses was translated by Nicholas Rowe.

Sorry to go off topic, but A.D. Melville: what do you think of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphosis? Have you read it?

[millwallbill]

A top 10 in some sort of chronological order, all of them worth reading.

1. Homer
2. Virgil
3. Chaucer
4. Shakespeare
5. Milton
6. Keats
7. Byron
8. Shelley
9. Whitman
10. Dickinson

The list is in no way exhaustive, but should offer you a way through the woods of the western poetical tradition. These are just names to start you off on what will hopefully be a lifelong journey of exploration.

[JCamilo]

Yeah, will get you lost in the woods and have an awful start. 8 poets from english idiom, a language which importance only really rose from only the last 2 centuries... Are you serious? Ovid alone is more relevant to western poetic tradtion than basically all english poetry.

[stlukesguild]

A "Top 10" list without Dante?!

[JCamilo]

Or Ovid, Ariosto, Petrarca, Horace, Sappho, Lucian... you know, exactly all those poets who founded the western tradition...

[AuntShecky]

I agree with JCamillo about Ovid and especially Petrarch, and of course would include Homer and Virgil. I also agree about Dante. But let's face it--he wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs. Only one joke in the whole Divine Comedy (and a cheap fart joke at that.)

I could never make a list. It would be far, far too lengthy and probably heavy with English poets as they formed the bulk of my education. I'm talking about the author of Beowulf, the Pearl poet, the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the metaphysical poets, Milton, and later, Pope and Dryden. Tennyson was a giant, and then Wordsworth. I could go on and on.

See what I mean? Rather than list them or praise 'em I'd rather be reading 'em.

[mortalterror]

Sorry to go off topic, but A.D. Melville: what do you think of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphosis? Have you read it?
I mentioned my opinion of the Melville translation on this site back in 2008: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?36149-What-translation-of-Ovid-s-Metamorphoses
Of bodies changed to other forms I tell;
You Gods, who have yourselves wrought every change,
Inspire my enterprise and lead my lay
In one continuous song from nature's first
Remote beginnings to our modern times.

That Melville translation really sticks in my craw. It sounds like he's updated ancient Roman poetry to a sixteenth century English idiom. It doesn't have the feel of ancient Latin with the added draw back that it doesn't even sound like 16th century English. Here's how Marlowe translated Book one of Ovid's Amores.

We which were Ovids five books, now are three,
For these before the rest preferreth he:
If reading five thou plainst of tediousnesse,
Two tane away, thy labor will be lesse:
With Muse upreard I meant to sing of armes,
Choosing a subject fit for feirse alarmes:
Both verses were alike till Love (men say)
Began to smile and tooke one foote away.

That Melville translation above feels all wrong. It's like he's reaching for something. I like the idea of translating just about anything into blank verse, but we've had developments since Shakespeare's time, Milton and Wordsworth for example; so modern blank verse doesn't sound that way anymore. If Melville isn't going to give a modern translation in a modern style, then what's the point of updating at all? Why not just take an older translation.

The Dryden translation is dated and doesn't sound any more like Ovid but it's still better than Melville's if you want to go that route.

Of bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
'Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to Caesar's times.

The Humphries translation may not be perfect but it has the asset of at least sounding something like Ovid.

I also mentioned my opinion here: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?50292-Allen-Mandelbaum-s-Ovid

For the Metamorphoses I'd definitely go with Rolfe Humphries over Mandelbaum. He's a little too clunky for such a smooth poet, and as someone above me has already noted, the rhyme jars on the ear.

Here's Mandelbaum:

Before the sea and lands began to be,
before the sky had manteled every thing,
then all of natures face was featureless-
what men call chaos: undigested mass
of crude, confused, and scumbled elements,
a heap of seeds that clashed, of things mismatched.
There was no Titan Sun to light the world,
no crescent Moon- no Phoebe- to renew,
her slender horns; in the surrounding air,
earth's weight had yet to find it's balanced state;
and Amphitrites arms had not yet stretched
along the farthest margins of the land.
For though the sea and land and air were there,
the land could not be walked upon, the sea
could not be swum, the air was without splendor:
no thing maintained it's shape; all were at war;
in one same body cold and hot would battle;
the damp contended with the dry, things hard
with soft, and weighty things with weightless parts.

That just seems so passionless and dry to me. Ovid ought to be translated with the sensual luxuriance one would give to the writings of a French decadent (Baudelaire),

You too Silenus, are on fire, insatiable lecher:
Wickedness alone prevents you growing old.
-Ovid, Fasti, Book I

and the sort of exactness of phrase and poise which we find in scholars like Petrarch, Eliot, and Leopardi. It completely lacks the rhythm of Roman rhetoric which was as much a part of poetry then as it would be in the Renaissance. You don't get the feeling of how intensely conscious he is of poetic tradition. The phrases here don't even sound like they come from the right period. They should sound at least a little bit like Tibullus or Propertius, the way that Eliot sounds a little like Pound and Yeats.

If I had
A hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, a voice
Of iron, I could not tell of all the shapes
Their crimes had taken, or their punishments.
-lines 835-838, Book VI, Virgil's Aeneid

If I had a tireless voice, lungs stronger than brass, and many mouths with many tongues, not even so could I embrace them all in words for the theme surpasses my strength.-Tristia, Bk. I, v. ln. 43-74, Ovid

Also, what's with some of his diction choices, "scumbled?"

Here's the Humphries:

Before the ocean was, or earth, or heaven,
Nature was all alike, a shapelessness,
Chaos, so-called, all rude and lumpy matter,
Nothing but bulk, inert, in whose confusion
Discordant atoms warred: there was no sun
To light the universe; there was no moon
With slender silver crescents filling slowly;
No earth hung balanced in surrounding air;
No sea reached far along the fringe of shore.
Land, to be sure, there was, and air, and ocean,
But land on which no man could stand, and water
No man could swim in, air no man could breathe,
Air without light, substance forever changing,
Forever at war: within a single body
Heat fought with cold, wet fought with dry, the hard
Fought with the soft, things having weight contended
With weightless things.

He should be as humorous as Chaucer, the way Marlowe makes him:

We which were Ovids five books, now are three,
For these before the rest preferreth he:
If reading five thou plainst of tediousnesse,
Two tane away, thy labor will be lesse:

Fun loving, but also moral:

I saw a man who laughed at shipwrecks, drowned
in the sea, and said: ‘The waves were never more just.’
-Ovid's Tristia, Book V

though not so severe as Horace, or pious as Virgil. One's a mercenary, the other a priest, but Ovid is a retiring man of letters. Raised to the purple, he's conscious of his aristocratic status and writes with a conscious stately nobility. Certain feelings, and people, are beneath him

One person alone (and this itself is a great wrong)
won’t grant me the title of an honest man.
Whoever it is (for I’ll be silent still as yet about his name)
-Ovid, Ibis tr. Kline

People tend to think of Roman society as chauvinistic, but like Euripides before him he shows a deep concern for the plight of women. He frequently heaps praise and tenderness upon his loving wife and in the Heroides draws many subtle portraits women who have been ill treated by their paramours.

Penelope to the tardy Ulysses:
do not answer these lines, but come, for
Troy is dead and the daughters of Greece rejoice.
But all of Troy and Priam himself
are not worth the price I've paid for victory.
How often I have wished that Paris
had drowned before he reached our welcoming shores.
If he had died I would not have been
compelled now to sleep alone in my cold bed
complaining always of the tiresome
prospect of endless nights and days spent working
like a poor widow at my tedious loom.
Imagining hazards more awful than real,
love has always been tempered by fear:
I was sure it was you the Trojans attacked
and the name of Hector made me pale;
if someone told the tale of Antilochus
I dreamed of you dead as he had died;
if they sang of the death of Menoetius' son,
slain in armour not his own, I wept,
because even clever tricks had failed
-Ovid, Heroids tr.Isbell

A monologue worthy of Browning.

I don't know any one translation that captures these various sides of him, but Humphries is the best I know of for the Metamorphoses. Mandelbaum seemed like an also ran in his translations of Dante, not even rising to the level of Ciardi or Longfellow. It's been some time since I've read Melville, but if his Ovid is half as good as his work on Statius' Thebaid it should be fine:

The strife of brothers and alternate reigns
Fought for in impious hatred and the guilt
Of tragic Thebes, these themes the Muses' fire
Has kindled in my heart.

Statius is the only writer who wears his learning on his sleeve more than Ovid. Each line of Melville's translation is lush, allusion laden, and delicious. But on the other hand, Humphries did put out a very readable Juvenal. If I recall correctly they had these beautiful long lines that show off Latin hexameter so well. I'm sure whichever you pick, it should turn out all right.

Now I have done my work. It will endure,
I trust, beyond Jove's anger, fire and sword,
Beyond Time's hunger. The day will come, I know,
So let it come, that day which has no power
Save over my body, to end my span of life
Whatever it may be. Still, part of me,
The better part, immortal, will be borne
Above the stars; my name will be remembered
Wherever Roman power rules conquered lands,
I shall be read, and through the centuries,
If prophecies of bards are ever truthful,
I shall be living, always.

[JCamilo]

I agree with JCamillo about Ovid and especially Petrarch, and of course would include Homer and Virgil. I also agree about Dante. But let's face it--he wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs. Only one joke in the whole Divine Comedy (and a cheap fart joke at that.)

I could never make a list. It would be far, far too lengthy and probably heavy with English poets as they formed the bulk of my education. I'm talking about the author of Beowulf, the Pearl poet, the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the metaphysical poets, Milton, and later, Pope and Dryden. Tennyson was a giant, and then Wordsworth. I could go on and on.

See what I mean? Rather than list them or praise 'em I'd rather be reading 'em.

Aye, Auntie. I do not even care for rankings much, but the comment is more at the baffling idea a list of 10 poets, almost all from the last centuries and 8 from english language is a good start and guide on western tradition. If anything, the western tradition is the re-telling of greek myths that Virgil and Ovid did latter Dante stabilished in his Limbo Chapter. That is Tradition.

As dantes, such serious guy. Who would imagine, that according to old legends, he would spend the day complaing with a metalsmith that quoted one of his stanzas wrongly, until the poor dude pronouced it correctly? :D

[mortalterror]

I agree with JCamillo about Ovid and especially Petrarch, and of course would include Homer and Virgil. I also agree about Dante. But let's face it--he wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs. Only one joke in the whole Divine Comedy (and a cheap fart joke at that.)

I could never make a list. It would be far, far too lengthy and probably heavy with English poets as they formed the bulk of my education. I'm talking about the author of Beowulf, the Pearl poet, the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the metaphysical poets, Milton, and later, Pope and Dryden. Tennyson was a giant, and then Wordsworth. I could go on and on.

See what I mean? Rather than list them or praise 'em I'd rather be reading 'em.
I remember at least two jokes in the Divine Comedy. First was that farce where the demons try to catch a soul but fall off the bridge into the boiling water themselves. The second was in Purgatory where Dante is at the level of the prideful who carry heavy weights on their backs crouched over to read a story about humility on the ground, and Dante hunches over in like fashion walking along to inspect it (because he'd been accused of pride himself presumably). Also, the part where he's beating a sinner in a river of sewage is a little funny. I rewrote that part myself once casting myself as Dante, Hemingway as Virgil, plus a fellow I despised in the other part, and it has always made me chuckle imagining such a revenge.

There are parts of the Divine Comedy which are meant to be humorous, if we would only get the context. In some ways it is not unlike Lucian's fabulous True Story where he sails among the stars then visits the afterlife making many witty observations. Then he finds the afterlife full of celebrities and enumerates their punishments adding ""The guides told the life of each, and the crimes for which they were being punished; and the severest punishment of all fell to those who told lies while in life and those who had written what was not true, among whom were Ctesias of Cnidos, Herodotus and many more. On seeing them, I had good hopes for the future, for I have never told a lie that I know of. "" The irony is that the whole tale is a great big stupendous lie. I imagine Dante is having fun with the reader somewhat after this fashion as well when he describes who is where and what they are doing.

[JCamilo]

Well, it was comedy after all... had to be filled with moral ironies and puns. I mean, Ulysses dying for not reaching Heaven is ironic, even if not haha.

[Ecurb]

How about Joseph Stalin (or is he not considered "Western")?

(Ecurb, thinking outside the box.)

[mona amon]

And Hitler for western art. :D

[Iain Sparrow]

And Hitler for western art. :D

Oh you folks in India and your fascination with Hitler.;)

I'm going to go with Dr.Seuss... probably the greatest American Poet... a fan I am.

[mona amon]

...:)

[Ecurb]

I think Stalin the poet surpassed Hitler the artist (although I wouldn't really know). Stalin was apparently a reasonably respected published poet befote the Revolution. Also, his literary talents led him to leadership -- he was editor of Pravda early in his political career.

I'll bet Churchill was a better painter than Hitler -- and Stalin and Churchill did win the War.