This introductory programme establishes the continuity and variety of poetry over six centuries, touching on different genres by using extracts from some of the many poems featured in the series - from Chaucer to Ted Hughes.

This programme explores the late Medieval period leading into the Renaissance, discussing poems dealing with love, death and ambition by Skelton, Wyatt, Raleigh, Marlowe and Shakespeare.

A chronological look at Shakespeare's dramatic genius, using extracts from eight plays: Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline and The Tempest.

The vigour and audacity of John Donne's love poetry is contrasted with his equally powerful devotional works. The programme then explores the work of Donne's disciple George Herbert, and Andrew Marvell.

This programme features excerpts from Jonathan Smart's 'Jubilate Agno', written in Bedlam, five poems by Blake, Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan', and Wordsworth's 'The Solitary Reaper' - a fine example of "emotion recollected in tranquillity".

Among the poems featured are Shelly's 'Ozymandias', 'The Mask of Anarchy' and 'Adonais'; Keats' 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' and 'To Autumn'; and part of Byron's 'Don Juan'.

The Victorian period of richly represented with extracts of poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold and Agernon Charles Swinburne.

This programme covers verse of the late Victorian period and the early twentieth century, with poems by Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley, A.E. Houseman and Rudyard Kipling.