391. (William Blake)

Blake’s Milton might have been called, at least as a second title, “The Lark and Wild Thyme,” since these are the objects … More

385. (William Wordsworth)

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the … More

Hadji Murat should be a tragedy—it is not. That is the crucial fact about it. Tolstoy refused to write tragedy, here … More

What did Tennyson add to English poetry? Or Wordsworth? Or Swinburne? It’s not a trivial question in the way a … More

The Turn of the Screw is the turn of the key into the heart of Henry James’ fiction; it is … More

Leopardi’s “La Sera Del Di Festa” (“The Evening of the Holiday” (that translations not one to which I will refer, … More

Here is the first stanza of “Obsession,” from Aaron Poochigian’s wonderful new translation of Baudelaire: Vast woods, you scare me … More

Wittgenstein praised Kierkegaard, but remarked also that a little of Kierkegaard goes a long way. For Wittgenstein, perhaps. But for … More

How long does it take to absorb an influence, to learn what the insights of another mean? A couple of … More

The early Yeats, the earliest aesthete, late pre-Raphaelite Yeats, the world is presented as a tumult of passion, fading into … More