The poem is written in a series of octaves (huitains in the French) each line of which contains eight syllables (octosyllabes), which is also the style of the poet François Villon in the "Ballade des dames du temps jadis" written later in the 15th century. In the debate between the Lover and the Lady, the alternating octaves delineate their arguments. The rhyme scheme is ABABBCBC of crossed rhymes (rimes croisées).

Belle dame sans merci (Beautiful lady with no mercy) (1424) is not readily available in moden English translation elsewhere, making this an essential addition to any library with a medieval literature or French literature collection.

On several counts, one particular collection of French lyrics made in France in the late fourteenth century, University of Pennsylvania MS 15, is the most likely repository of Chaucer's French poems. It is the largest manuscript anthology extant of fourteenth-century French lyrics in the formes fixes (balade, rondeaux, virelay, lay, and five-stanza chanson) with by far the largest number of works of unknown authorship. The known authors represented in the manuscript and the texts themselves have notable associations with England and with Chaucer. And intriguingly there are fifteen lyrics each headed by the initials Ch, very likely indications of authorship, neatly inserted between rubric and text. . . . [The] rubrics, together with other substantial manuscript evidence and the intrinsic worth of the poems, make them easily the best candidates among extant French lyrics for Chaucer's authorship, appropriate representatives of his French work. - from the Introduction

A young woman, disabled by a brutal attack, meets the mother of her college friend, who died several years earlier when the two students went to Columbia to protest the activities of a large oil corporation.

Keats’s first volume of poems, published in 1817, demonstrated both his belief in the consummate power of poetry and his liberal views. While he was criticized by many for his politics, his immediate circle of friends and family immediately recognized his genius. In his short life he proved to be one of the greatest and most original thinkers of the second generation of Romantic poets, with such poems as ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ and ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. While his writing is illuminated by his exaltation of the imagination and abounds with sensuous descriptions of nature’s beauty, it also explores profound philosophical questions. John Barnard’s acclaimed volume contains all the poems known to have been written by Keats, arranged by date of composition. The texts are lightly modernized and are complemented by extensive notes, a comprehensive introduction, an index of classical names, selected extracts from Keats’s letters and a number of pieces not widely available, including his annotations to Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Full woman, fleshly apple, hot moon, thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light, what obscure brilliance opens between your columns? What ancient night does a man touch with his senses? Loving is a journey with water and with stars, with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour: loving is a clash of lightning-bolts and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey. The poetry of Pablo Neruda is beloved worldwide for its passion, humor, and exceptional accessibility. The nearly fifty poems selected for this collection and translated by Stephen Mitchell—widely praised for his original and definitive translations of spiritual writings and poetry—focus on Neruda's mature period, when the poet was in his fifties. A bilingual volume, with Neruda's original Spanish text facing Mitchell's English translation, it will bring Neruda's sensuous work to vibrant life for a whole new generation of readers.