The Wife's Lament
by Anonymous Author
Translated by André Babyn
You can read The Wife of Bath's Tale's main text and modern English translation below, side-by-side.
The Wife of Bath's Prologue
The Prologe of the Wyves Tale of Bathe
[Expand...]
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Introduction to the Songs of Experience
By William Blake
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees
Whose ears have heard,
[Expand...]
The Tyger
By William Blake (1757-1827)
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Gettysburg Address
Delivered by the 16th American President Abraham Lincoln
Date: November 19, 1863
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a[Expand...]
The Good-Morrow
Tithonus
Fra Lippo Lippi
Felix Randal
MORNING
A clearing on the edge of the market, dominated by an immense 'odan' tree. It is the
village centre. The wall of the bush school flanks the stage on the right, and[Expand...]
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
[Expand...]
Title: As You Like It
Author: William Shakespeare
Release date: December 1, 1997 [eBook #1121]
Most recently updated: October 29, 2024
Language: English
Dramatis Personae
[Expand...]
Oedipus Rex or Oedipus the King
[Suppliants of all ages are seated round the altar at the palace doors, at their head a PRIEST OF ZEUS. To them enter OEDIPUS.]
[Expand...]RIDERS TO THE SEA
A PLAY IN ONE ACT
First performed at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, February 25th, 1904.
PERSONS
MAURYA (an old woman)...... Honor[Expand...]
ARMS AND THE MAN
ACT I
Night. A lady’s bedchamber in Bulgaria, in a small town near the Dragoman Pass. It is late in November in the[Expand...]
CANTO THE FIRST
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the[Expand...]
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
By John Keats
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round[Expand...]
Ode on a Grecian Urn
By John Keats
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A[Expand...]
Ode on Melancholy
By John Keats
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape[Expand...]
Ode to a Nightingale
By John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate[Expand...]
Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which[Expand...]
To a Skylark
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of[Expand...]
Kubla Khan
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred[Expand...]
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
PART I
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering[Expand...]
Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of[Expand...]
London
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
Nurse’s Song (Songs of Experience)
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And whisp’rings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise[Expand...]
The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow
A little black thing among the snow,
Crying "weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy[Expand...]
Introduction to the Songs of Innocence
Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to[Expand...]
Nurse’s Song (Songs of Innocence)
By William Blake
When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my[Expand...]
The Chimney Sweeper
By William Blake
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"
[Expand...]
The Lamb
By William Blake
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free
By William Wordsworth
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the[Expand...]
London, 1802
By William Wordsworth
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic[Expand...]
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
By William Wordsworth
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each[Expand...]
She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways
By William Wordsworth
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very[Expand...]
The Collar
By George Herbert
I struck the board, and cried, "No more;
I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the[Expand...]
The Sun Rising
By John Donne
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy[Expand...]
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
By John Donne
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now,[Expand...]
The Canonization Summary & Analysis
by John Donne
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune, flout,
With[Expand...]
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
[Expand...]Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
By John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost[Expand...]
Paradise Lost: Book 1 (1674 version)
By John Milton
OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
[Expand...]
from The Faerie Queene: Book I, Canto I
By Edmund Spenser
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far[Expand...]
THE TRAGICAL HISTORY
OF
DOCTOR FAUSTUS
By Christopher Marlowe
.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
THE POPE.
CARDINAL OF LORRAIN.
THE EMPEROR OF GERMANY.
DUKE OF VANHOLT.
[Expand...]
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Shakespeare homepage | Macbeth | Entire play
ACT I
SCENE I. A desert place.
Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches
First Witch
When shall we[Expand...]
ACT I
SCENE I[1]
[Enter] ANTONIO and DELIO
DELIO. You are welcome to your country, dear Antonio;
You have been long in France, and you return
A very formal Frenchman in your[Expand...]
ACT 1
Scene 1
Enter Antonio, Salarino, and Solanio.
ANTONIO
In sooth I know not why I am so sad.
It wearies me, you say it wearies you.
But how[Expand...]
ACT 1. SCENE 1.1.
A ROOM IN VOLPONE'S HOUSE.
ENTER VOLPONE AND MOSCA.
VOLP: Good morning to the day; and next, my gold:
Open the shrine, that I may see my Saint.
[Expand...]
PART I. A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT.
CHAPTER I.
The author gives some account of himself and family. His first inducements to travel. He is shipwrecked, and swims for his life, gets safe on[Expand...]
Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave
by Aphra Behn
I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this Royal Slave, to entertain my reader with adventures of a feigned hero, whose life and[Expand...]
THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING
By Henry Fielding
Chapter i. — The introduction to the work, or bill of fare to the feast.
An author ought to consider himself,[Expand...]
BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA
CHAPTER I
Motives to the present work—Reception of the Author’s first publication—Discipline of his taste at school—Effect of contemporary writers on youthful minds—Bowles’s Sonnets—Comparison between the poets before and since Pope.
ARISTOTLE'S POETICS
I
I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting the essential quality of each; to inquire into the structure of the plot as requisite to a[Expand...]
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth (1800)
THE FIRST volume of these Poems has already been submitted to general
perusal. It was published, as an experiment, which, I hoped, might be of
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
Together with selected notes on some of the plays
By Samuel Johnson
[Johnson published his annotated edition of Shakespeare's Plays in 1765.]
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
Some of the notes to
Of Marriage and Single Life
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest[Expand...]
Of Truth
WHAT is truth? said jesting Pilate,and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as[Expand...]
Of Plantations
PLANTATIONS are amongst ancient, primitive, and heroical works. When the world was young, it begat more children; but now it is old, it begets fewer: for I may justly account new plantations, to[Expand...]
Of Great Place
MEN in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state; servants of fame; and servants of business. So as they have no freedom; neither in their persons, nor in[Expand...]
Of Revenge
REVENGE is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’ s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend[Expand...]
Of Love
THE stage is more beholding to love, than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it[Expand...]
The Spectator's
Account Of Himself
Spectator No. 1 1/3/1711 from Addison's Essays
Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem
Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.. — Horace
. Sir Roger At Church
Spectator No. 112, 9/7/1711 Addison's Essays
I AM always very well pleased with a country Sunday; and think, if keeping holy the seventh day were only a[Expand...]
Tuesday, July 10, 1711. By Richard Steele (1672-1729)
In my first description of the company in which I pass most of my time, it may be remembered that I mentioned a great affliction which my friend[Expand...]
Death Of Sir Roger
Spectator No. 517, 23/10/1712 Essays By Addison
Heu pietas, heu prisca fides! —Virgil Aen. vi. 878.
Mirror of ancient faith!
Undaunted worth! Inviolable truth!— Dryden
THE SPECTATOR
Friday, March 2, 1711
Ast Alli sex Et plures uno conclamant ore.-- Juv
THE first of our Society is a Gentleman of Worcestershire, of antient Descent, a Baronet,[Expand...]
The Lotos-eaters
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In[Expand...]
From Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets series, published in 3 volumes between 1779 and 1781.
The life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography, has been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose[Expand...]
Absalom and Achitophel
By John Dryden
In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli'd his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly[Expand...]
ACT THE FIRST.
SCENE—A Chamber in an old-fashioned House.
Enter MRS. HARDCASTLE and MR. HARDCASTLE.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. I vow, Mr. Hardcastle, you’re very particular. Is there a creature in the whole country but ourselves,[Expand...]
What dire Offence from am’rous Causes springs,
What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things,
I sing — This Verse to C——, Muse! is due;
This, ev’n[Expand...]
ACT I.—SCENE I.
A Chocolate-house.
Mirabell and Fainall rising from cards. Betty waiting.
MIRA. You are a fortunate man, Mr. Fainall.
FAIN. Have we done?
MIRA. What you please. I’ll play on to entertain[Expand...]
Dover Beach
By Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone;[Expand...]
The Scholar-Gipsy
By Matthew Arnold
Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
Nor let thy[Expand...]
Thyrsis: A Monody, to Commemorate the Author's Friend, Arthur Hugh Clough
By Matthew Arnold
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
[Expand...]
Felix Randal
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till[Expand...]
Pied Beauty
Play Audio
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout[Expand...]
Spring and Fall
Play Audio
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
to a young child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh[Expand...]
The Windhover
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
To Christ our Lord
Toggle annotations
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling[Expand...]
Locksley Hall
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn:
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.
'T is[Expand...]
Oenone
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and[Expand...]
Andrea del Sarto
By Robert Browning
But do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
[Expand...]
A PASSAGE TO INDIA
PART I: MOSQUE
CHAPTER I
Except for the Marabar Caves—and they are twenty miles off—the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary. Edged rather than washed by[Expand...]
HEART OF DARKNESS
BY
JOSEPH CONRAD
Harlem
By Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it[Expand...]
I, Too
By Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat[Expand...]
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
By Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown[Expand...]
The Weary Blues
By Langston Hughes
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
O Captain! My Captain!
By Walt Whitman
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near,[Expand...]
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
By Walt Whitman
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
[Expand...]
Wild nights - Wild nights! (269)
Play Audio
By Emily Dickinson
Wild nights - Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile - the winds[Expand...]
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
By Emily Dickinson
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That[Expand...]
I taste a liquor never brewed
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Emily[Expand...]
AGAMEMNON
CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
AGAMEMNON, son of Atreus and King of Argos and Mycenae; Commander-in-Chief of the Greek armies in the War against Troy.
CLYTEMNESTRA, daughter of Tyndareus, sister of Helen; wife[Expand...]
The Iliad, Book I, Lines
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Homer
[Expand...]
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
NURSE: a servant of Medea
TUTOR: a servant assigned to Jason’s children
MEDEA: wife of Jason
CHORUS: a group of Corinthian women
CREON: king of Corinth
JASON: husband[Expand...]
SENECA, PHAEDRA
SENECA THE YOUNGER was a Latin playwright and philosopher who flourished in Rome
in the late C1st A.D. during the reigns of the emperors Claudius and Nero. His surviving
work[Expand...]
THE FROGS OF ARISTOPHANES
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
THE GOD DIONYSUS
XANTHIAS, his slave
AESCHYLUS
EURIPIDES
HERACLES
PLUTO
CHARON AEACUS, house porter to Pluto
A CORPSE
A MAIDSERVANT[Expand...]
A Doll’s House
by Henrik Ibsen
Contents
ACT I.
ACT II.
ACT III.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Torvald Helmer.
Nora, his wife.
Doctor Rank.
Mrs Linde.
[Expand...]
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
A few words about Dostoevsky himself may help the English reader to understand his
work.
Dostoevsky was the son of a doctor. His parents were very hard-working and deeply
[Expand...]
Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka
Translated by David Wyllie
I
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself
transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He[Expand...]
The Outsiders
S. E. HINTON
Chapter 1
WHEN I STEPPED OUT into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two
things on my mind: Paul Newman[Expand...]
ACT I
The Porters' one-room flat in a large Midland town.
Early evening. April.
The scene is a fairly large attic room, at the top of a large Victorian house. The ceiling[Expand...]