Pope

Many people avoid the greats, the classics. They are too hard, too strange, too out-of-date--and even a poetry and literature lover can understand that. Balzac and Hardy are people writing in their own time periods, about issues during that time and in styles of their period. They are reacting to their world, and sometimes what they are doing is more Dickensian 'pointing out injustice/evil' than what we are used to in our literature today.

Despite this, always (try) be willing to give them a second. A good example is the famous English long poet Alexander Pope [1688-1744]. I myself do not easily turn to him for fun, but then I read this excerpt from his poem "An Essay on Criticism" [read it all here]--so dip in and out of the classics once in a while, it might turn out you find something you love; doesn't this sound like Keats? :


A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
[...]