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This collection of aphorisms, poems and parables has been described as the reflections of a philosopher watching from his window and commenting on the scenes passing before him.

The dramatic romance was a poetic form particularly favored by Robert Browning. This collection of 25 poems includes many of the poet's most celebrated efforts in this genre. Each of these poems is essentially a monologue or imagined conversation by a character recalling a life-changing event. The particular occurrence may be related to war (Incident of the French Camp), love (The Last Ride Together), murder (Porphyria's Lover), or even a humorous fable (The Pied Piper of Hamelin.)

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552 - 1618) was one of the most prominent political figures in the Elizabethan era. He was also a soldier, explorer, and prolific author. Although, like John Donne, Raleigh did not primarily consider himself a poet, he left a small collection of verse, notable for its pithiness and mordant wit. This collection includes 21 of the most popular poems attributed to Raleigh.

The Kybalion purports to be an exposition of the teaching of the mysterious Hermes Trismegistus, a legendary figure, whose origin is buried in Egyptian mythology. A considerable body of literature that expounds theories and practices attributed to him is extant and has been categorized as Hermetic. The focus of early Hermetic literature was on conjuring and alchemy. In later centuries, Hermeticism developed into a philosophy of personal self-development, the object of which was the understanding and transcending of physical reality.

This dramatic romance, first published in 1845, ostensibly relates the story of the escape of a love-lorn young woman from the rigours of life with a stern and uncaring husband. Several commentators have seen the poem as an oblique reference to Browning's own current life situation, in which he enabled his future wife, Elizabeth Barrett, to escape from the confines of a patriarchal household to Italy, a country that forms the backdrop to many of his poems.

The story concerns the young and vivacious Emma Watson, one of six children of a widowed clergyman. Emma has spent most of her life under the care of a wealthy aunt of liberal views, and has received a good education. However, when her aunt enters into a second marriage, Emma is forced to return to the family home, where she is affronted by the crass hunting for husbands undertaken her sisters, Penelope and Margaret.

This collection of sixteen poems features several notable examples of his early work, including “Oenone” and “The May Queen”, as well as two of his most iconic works, “The Lady of Shalott” and “The Lotus Eaters."

The authorship of this Gospel has been widely disputed. Some scholars accept that it was really written by Nicodemus, the Pharisee who visited Jesus by night, as described in chapter three of John’s Gospel. Others have conjectured that the Gospel was a forgery made towards the close of the third century by some zealous believer who imagined it would aid the spread of Christianity. Jeremiah Jones notes that such pious frauds were very common among Christians even in the first three centuries, and that the circulation of forgeries of this nature seems natural and probable.

E. Clerihew Bentley is credited with the invention of the ‘clerihew’, or humorous verse aphorism, on biographical subjects. This collection, which was illustrated by G. K Chesterton, contains thirty-nine irregular quatrains on historical and contemporary celebrities, starting with Sir Christopher Wren and concluding with the publisher, T. Werner Laurie.

Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses was Paterson's second collection of poems and was published in 1902. Among the 46 poems are some of Paterson's best-known pieces of verse, including "Rio Grande's Last Race" and "Mulga Bill's Bicycle"

This anthology of twenty poems was Yeats's first major collection after he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923.

Caliban is a major character in The Tempest by Shakespeare. He is a deformed monster, the offspring of Sycrorax, a witch. Prospero, a magician who presides over the island where Caliban dwells, has made him a servant. This galls Caliban's spirit, as he believes himself to be the rightful ruler of the island. Setebos is the deity who was worshipped by Sycorax and is mentioned by Caliban in two scenes.

William Wordsworth belonged to a chosen band of poets for whom poetry was a priesthood, displayed in his unerring devotion to his art. He nourished his unique poetic gift by daily intimacy with Nature. It is Wordworth’s peculiar achievement to reveal the impulses at work behind the outward beauty of Nature, and to manifest its sustaining influence upon the spirit of man.

First published in the Bulletin in the nineties, Paterson's verse has enjoyed enduring success throughout Australian literary history. Paterson had an intimate knowledge of life in the outback: he knew bushmen and he knew horses. His boundary riders and shearers, his buckjumpers and station hands, are real characters—the first realistic portraits of Australians in the bush at work and play to appear in verse. Many of the characters he created have so imprinted themselves on the public imagination that they have become part of Australian folklore.

This collection contains several of Tennyson’s best-known poems and shows his mastery of both lyricism and epic narrative.

Andrea Del Sarto (1836 - 1530) was a Florentine painter whose career flourished during the High Renaissance. In this dramatic monologue, "the faultless painter" (Andrea Senza Errori, as he was surnamed by the Italians) is the speaker. He addresses his unsympathetic wife, Lucrezia, upon whom he dotes, and for whom he has broken faith with his royal patron, Francis I of France so that he can meet the expenses of her indulgent lifestyle. He laments that he has not realized the possibilities of his genius, partly blaming and partly excusing the woman who has failed to support his high ideals.

In Rhonda Byrne's self-help book, The Secret, published in 2006, the theory of the Law of Attraction is presented as a re-discovery of an ancient metaphysical principle, buried in ages of historical neglect. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Exactly a century earlier, prolific New Thought author William Walker Atkinson published Thought Vibration, a succinct but thorough examination of the power of thought and its function in the creation and control of personal circumstances.

In As You Like It, a wicked Duke expels his virtuous brother, the lawful ruler, from his domains. The banished Duke takes refuge with his followers in the Forest of Arden, where they live as free a life as did Robin Hood and his merry men.

In this entertaining pamphlet, the author, who was an expert on the artistic traditions of China and Japan, examines the effect of Zen Buddhism on popular culture. He provides a perceptive thumbnail view of the development of Buddhism in the Far East, and engaging portraits of its luminary figures.