Lucienne Stassaert

The Aeneid (/ɪˈniːɪd/; Latin: Aeneis [ae̯ˈneːɪs]) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas's wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.

The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the Iliad, composed in the 8th century BC. Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas's wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome and a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous pietas, and fashioned this into a compelling founding myth or national epic that at once tied Rome to the legends of Troy, explained the Punic wars, glorified traditional Roman virtues and legitimized the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes and gods of Rome and Troy. (Full article...)

William Butler Yeats (/ˈjeɪts/; 13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Irishman so honoured for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

Yeats was a very good friend of American expatriate poet and Bollingen Prize laureate Ezra Pound. Yeats wrote the introduction for Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali, which was published by the India Society. (Full article...)

• ... that Michael Huber's translation of Salomon Gessner's works into French made Gessner the best-known German-language poet in Europe before Goethe?
• ... that a poem by Moses da Rieti includes an encyclopedia of the sciences, a Jewish paradise fantasy, and a post-biblical history of Jewish literature?
• ... that poet and rapper Elayne Harrington carried all her property in her bodhrán case while homeless in Dublin?
• ... that Taylor Swift announced her upcoming eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, while accepting a Grammy for her album Midnights?
• ... that one reviewer for Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century was let down by the book's lack of poetry?
• ... that Sarah Pickstone based her John Moores Prize–winning painting on an illustration that accompanied the poem "Not Waving but Drowning"?

A Flower Given to My Daughter by James Joyce
Frail the white rose and frail are Her hands that gave Whose soul is sere and paler Than time's wan wave. Rosefrail and fair-- yet frailest A wonder wild In gentle eyes thou veilest, My blueveined child.

Full set of selected poems

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