Dover Publications: 4880 books

Timid Don Diego Vega grows faint at even the mention of bloodshed and would rather read poetry than defend his own honor. No one suspects that the effete aristocrat is living a double life as Zorro the fox, bold fighter of injustice, whose sword is ever ready to defend the poor and oppressed against...

In his unconventional verse, Walt Whitman spoke in a powerful, sensual, oratorical, and inspiring voice. His most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was a long-term project that the poet compared to the building of a cathedral or the slow growth of a tree. During his lifetime, from 1819 to 1892, it went...

*"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. "*These deceptively simple lines from the title poem of this collection suggest Robert Frost at his most representative: the language is simple, clear and colloquial, yet dense with...

In the masterly cadences of T. S. Eliot's verse, the 20th century found its definitive poetic voice, an incredible "image of its accelerated grimace," in the words of Eliot's friend and mentor, Ezra Pound. This volume is a rich collection of much of Eliot's greatest work. The title poem,...

Milton's great 17th-century epic draws upon Bible stories and classical mythology to explore the meaning of existence, as understood by people of the Western world. Its roots lie in the Genesis account of the world's creation and the first humans; its focus is a poetic interpretation "Of Man's first...

In 1855, Walt Whitman published — at his own expense — the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of twelve poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, which eschewed the general society and culture of the time, the writing is...

In the 19th century, abolitionist and African-American periodicals printed thousands of poems by black men and women on such topics as bondage and freedom, hatred and discrimination, racial identity and racial solidarity, along with dialect verse that mythologized the Southern past. Early in the 20th...

Most of us, at one time or another, have experienced wanderlust. For many, the desire to explore is almost irresistible. Now for devotees of poetry, and for those who long for the open road, this highly affordable collection contains a rich selection of poems about travel and adventure. You’ll find...

"There are strange things done in the midnight sun," declared Robert Service as he related the fulfillment of a dying prospector's request. "The Cremation of Sam McGee" was based on one of many peculiar tales he heard upon his 1904 arrival in the Canadian frontier town of Whitehorse. Less than a decade...

A highly distilled form of Japanese poetry, haiku consists of seventeen syllables, usually divided among three lines. Though brief, they tell a story or paint a vivid picture, leaving it to the reader to draw out the meanings and complete them in the mind's eye. Haiku often contains a hidden dualism...

Among the best known and most quoted books of the Old Testament, the Book of Psalms contains some 150 hymns of praise, prayers of crisis, and songs of faith once attributed solely to the Biblical King David. It is now believed that this collection of poems, originally chanted or sung with instrumental...

One of the great Shakespearean tragedies, Macbeth is a dark and bloody drama of ambition, murder, guilt, and revenge. Prompted by the prophecies of three mysterious witches and goaded by his ambitious wife, the Scottish thane Macbeth murders Duncan, King of Scotland, in order to succeed him on the...

"[Cane] has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. I love it passionately; could not possibly exit without it." — Alice Walker "A breakthrough in prose and poetical writing …. This book should be on all readers' and writers' desks and in their minds." — Maya Angelou Hailed...

In such poems as "Gunga Din," "Mandalay," "Tommy," "Danny Deever," "If —," "The White Man's Burden," and "The Female of the Species," Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) evoked stirring images and created archetypes of British character...