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Books(and other works) written by writers born prior to 1630(works by writers born 1630 and later coming soon). Ancient Greek and Roman Writers are not yet included. Books such as the Bible and the Quran are not yet included.

Beowulf by unknown ~700	'Song Before Drinking' and 'She Spins Silk' by Li Bai ~762	The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu ~1021
Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyám 1131	The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri 1321	Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio 1353
Trionfi by Petrarch ~1368	Canzoniere by Petrarch 1368	Africa by Petrarch 1374	Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer ~1385	Piers Plowman by William Landland 1387
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer ~1399	'The Lays' and 'The Grand Testament' by François Villon ~1463	Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory 1485	Utopia by Thomas More 1516	Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto 1532
Gargantua by François Rabelais 1564	The Lusiads by Luís Vaz de Camões 1572	Sonnets pour Hélène by Pierre de Ronsard ~1585	La Franciade by Pierre de Ronsard ~1585	Tamburlaine the Great by Christopher Marlowe 1587 or 1588
The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe 1589 or 1590	Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe 1589 or 1593	El maestro de danzar(The Dancing Master) by Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio 1594	Noche de San Juan by Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio ?
Essais by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne 1595	Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare 1595	The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser 1596	Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare 1599
Hamlet by William Shakespeare 1601	Volpone by Benjamin Jonson 1606	King Lear by William Shakespeare 1608	sonnets by William Shakespeare 1609	Songs and Sonnets by John Donne 1609-10
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 1615	The Alter by George Herbert 1633	Easter Wings by George Herbert 1633	Comus by John Milton 1634
Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño 1635	Medée by Pierre Corneille 1635	Le Cid by Pierre Corneille 1636	Lycidas by John Milton 1637	Areopagitica by John Milton 1644
ALSO SEE BELOW	SEE BELOW
To the Virgins to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick 1648	To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell early 1650s	Tartuffe by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin 1664	Le Misanthrope by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin 1666(06/04)	Paradise Lost by John Milton 1667
Fables choisies by Jean de La Fontaine 1668(03/31)	Le Bourgeois gentilhomme by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin 1670(10/14)	The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan 1678(02)	Tales of My Mother Goose by Charles Perrault 1695

To the Virgins to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick 1648 

    Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
    Old Time is still a-flying;
    And this same flower that smiles today
    To-morrow will be dying.

    The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
    The higher he's a-getting,
    The sooner will his race be run,
    And nearer he's to setting.

    That age is best which is the first,
    When youth and blood are warmer;
    But being spent, the worse, and worst
    Times still succeed the former.

    Then be not coy, but use your time,
    And, while ye may, go marry:
    For having lost but once your prime,
    You may forever tarry. 



To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell early 1650s 

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
A hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

82

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