Roman poetry, largely an adaptation and revision of Greek poetry, featured many different styles, from the epics of Vergil to the short, confessional poems of Catullus. Satires, religious themes, and heroic subjects were all possibilities, with romantic topics also having prominence in the Republican era. The only true uniting force in Roman poetry was a constant stress on the meter and rhythm of the poem, with strict rules governing the usage of different syllables.

One of the oldest and most consistently written kinds of poem is an elegy, a work that is dedicated to the memory of a recently deceased person. An elegy can take on almost any poetic form, such as a sonnet, a cinquain, or any other specific kind of poem. Elegies were written by the ancient Greeks and Romans and continue to be written by modern poets.

Alliteration is a poetic strategy that intentionally repeats the same initial sound or syllable in multiple words in a line or lines of poetry. Alliteration can help create a unique rhythm or special structure. While developed in poetry, alliteration is also widely used in prose writing.

The authorship of The Illiad and The Odyssey is traditionally attributed to Homer.

Gilgamesh was likely a real king of Uruk, in modern day Iraq, probably sometime around 2500 BCE. He is most well known, however, as the main character of the lengthy poem The Epic of Gilgamesh, which was written between 1300 and 1000 BCE. The poem tells the story of his rivalry and then friendship with the wild man Enkidu and his subsequent survival of the great deluge.

The Mahabharata is one of the epic Sanskrit texts of India, which details an epic struggle between two related families, the Kauravas and Pandavas. Included in the Mahabharata are smaller pieces which have been foundational in the development of Hinduism, such as the Bhagavad Gita.

Catullus was a Roman poet most well known for his very short poems, typically on the love for a mysterious woman he refers to as "Lesbia." There is another element to Catullus' poetry, however, which includes biting comments about various politicians and notable Romans. Included among these figures is Julius Caesar, before he became the first Dictator of Rome.

The Homeric epics, a collective name for the epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer, are long verse retellings of the Trojan War. The epics were written around the eighth or ninth Centuries BCE, but the Trojan War, if it took place, happened some four hundred or five hundred years before the poems were first composed. Both epics tell of great heroes and the intervention of divine presences.

Of course, the very name "Song of Songs" already tempts you to answer that this is a piece of poetry, even if you are not aware of its genre and content. The poem is actually a piece of erotic love poetry, detailing the back and forth of the desires of a bride and groom for each other's beauty and love. The poem was ultimately brought into the overall canon of the Hebrew Scriptures because of its allegorical interpretation for the relation between the Hebrew people and God. For many Christian mystics, this book played a massively important role for describing the relationship between the individual soul and God as well. For example, the great monastic, Cistercian writer Bernard of Clairvaux produced numerous sermons on the Song, not even making it through all of the text in spite of writing over eighty sermons. 

The Song is also known as the "Song of Solomon" or the "Canticle of Canticles."

The Divine Comedy tells the story of its author, Dante, traveling through the different realms of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, all to find what happened to his deceased lover, Beatrice. The work is divided into three separate sections between Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Heaven). The whole work is an allegory for the soul's journey to God, as expressed in Medieval Catholic theology.