Poetry
4 posts
Codex Manesse (Walther von der Vogelweide)
Illuminated manuscript page (Minnesinger songbook) · Anonymous (Zürich workshop, c. 1304 to c. 1340)
This page from the Codex Manesse (Heidelberg University Library, Cod. Pal. germ. 848) depicts the Middle High German poet Walther von der Vogelweide in the conventional posture of contemplative compos
Beowulf: The First Folio
Sacred Text (manuscript) · Anonymous (Anglo-Saxon scribe, c. 10th-11th century)
The opening folio of the only surviving manuscript of Beowulf, Cotton Vitellius A.xv at the British Library. The poem was composed at some point between the 8th and 11th centuries; the manuscript copy
The Albatross
Poem · Charles Baudelaire
I have come back to this poem more often than to any other in Les Fleurs du Mal, and I do not entirely know why. It is not the most ambitious in the book. It is not the most beautiful. The metaphor is
Inferno, Canto III: The Gate of Hell
Sacred text (Italian narrative poem) · Dante Alighieri
The inscription above the gate of Hell is the most quoted passage in the Inferno, and the third line in particular has had a longer afterlife than the rest of the poem. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'
