Don Juan (Canto I — Selected Excerpts)
In witty ottava rima, Byron’s “Don Juan” swaps epic heroics for satire — a comic anatomy of desire and hypocrisy.
maximus
She Walks in Beauty
Byron’s classic lyric celebrates beauty as harmony — a poised balance of dark and bright, surface and soul.
So, We’ll Go No More a Roving
A tender farewell to excess, Byron’s lyric accepts time’s limits so that love may last.
Darkness
An apocalyptic lyric from 1816, “Darkness” imagines a sunless world — grandeur without comfort, entropy without appeal.
Il Penseroso (Selected Excerpts)
Milton’s companion ode to contemplation praises learned solitude, ritual, and vision as a humane counterbalance to mirth.
Lycidas (Selected Excerpts)
Milton’s pastoral elegy blends classical rite and Christian prophecy, turning grief into renewed vocation.
Paradise Lost (Selected Excerpts)
Milton’s epic of the Fall explores freedom and obedience in sweeping blank verse — theology unfolding as dramatic action.
On His Blindness (Sonnet XIX)
Milton’s Sonnet XIX reframes vocation through patience: “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
L’Allegro (Selected Excerpts)
Milton’s ode to mirth celebrates festivity as a disciplined joy — pastoral song and theater shaping perception and virtue.
O Captain! My Captain!
Whitman’s elegy for Lincoln balances public exultation with private grief in a rare, formally rhymed lament.
I Hear America Singing
An anthem of labor and individuality, “I Hear America Singing” gathers many voices into one democratic chorus.
Song of Myself (Selected Excerpts)
Whitman’s “Song of Myself” makes a democratic, embodied lyric — a capacious voice that invites contradiction and communion.