The Song of Hiawatha, a lengthy epic in trochaic tetrameter about a Native American hero, was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1855. The poem is a distinctively Romantic piece of literature, with a dashing tale about its hero and a sentimentalized story. Longfellow's poem was an instant success and became a national epic for America by the end of the nineteenth century.

The poet Edgar Allen Poe composed and published "The Raven" in 1845, and it was an instant but controversial success. Immediately well-known by the masses, the poem, which deals with a raven visiting a lovelorn student, was scorned by many fellow poets and literary critics. The work, easily memorable for its refrain, remains well known to this day.

"O Captain! My Captain!" was a strange poem for Walt Whitman, as it both followed a fairly traditional structure and was anthologized in a book with different poets. Whitman does rhyme in his eulogy to Lincoln, but also adopts a non-orthodox scheme. The poem has become one of Whitman's most famous, as it was also included in his Leaves of Grass by that book's final edition.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner tells the near-mythical story of a sailor on a cursed ship in the arctic that encounters Death and misfortune after the sailor kills an albatross. The crew blame their luck on the mariner's killing of the albatross, and force him to wear it throughout the voyage.

The passage contains the entirety of Walt Whitman's "America," a short poem published in his collection Leaves of Grass in 1855.

(Passage adapted from "America" by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass (1855).)

Le Morte D'Arthur ("The Death of Arthur") is a collection of stories written by Thomas Malory that chronicle the life, adventures, and death of King Arthur.

Robert Burns (1759-1796) is largely considered Scotland's national poet, and among his most famous compositions is the lyrics to the popular New Year's tune "Auld Lang Syne." Burns both compiled and edited a number of Scottish folk songs, and wrote his own lyrics to traditional tunes. Burns' birthday, January 25, is celebrated as a holiday in Scotland and around the world by the Scottish diaspora.

The poet John Donne was an Anglican clergyman, and wrote many poems which reflect a deep and pious religious faith. Donne, however, also excelled at writing sonnets that fit in with a traditional sonnet form, including extremely sensual love poems filled with erotic imagery.

Candide was written by Voltaire, a French Enlightenment author, in 1759 and systematically details a series of ills of European society. It targets religion and challenges the authority of the monarchy.

The Aeneid, written by the poet Vergil between 29 and 19 BCE, tells the story of Aeneas, a Trojan hero and the mythical founder of Rome. As such, the story is both a continuation of Homer's Iliad, and serves as a founding myth for the Roman people. Vergil's poem traces how Aeneas fled Troy, led a Trojan fleet, and eventually settled in Italy.