356. (Charles Baudelaire)

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

354. (Søren Kierkegaard)

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

348. (Charles Baudelaire)

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

346. (W.B. Yeats)

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

341. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

The Fire of Drift-wood DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD. We sat within the farm-house old, Whose windows, looking o’er the bay, … More

340. (Robert Browning)

It’s true enough that Robert Browning’s enduring preoccupation was the perpetual fracturing of truth. But that preoccupation persists through poetry … More

338. (Algernon Charles Swinburne)

The first chorus of Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon is by widely accepted as one of his finest achievements—susceptible, as all … More

336. (William Wordsworth)

O blithe New-comer! I have heard,I hear thee and rejoice.O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,Or but a wandering Voice? … More

330. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

Though he does so only indirectly, Coleridge raises the question of whether literature can be considered a form of knowledge? … More

327. (William Blake)

A source of strength for William Blake’s sensitivity towards freedom, and all that it can mean and be, is a … More