A representative anthology of five centuries of poetry, which includes the greatest poets of the Old and New World (John Donne, John Keats, William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, William Yates, Emily Dickinson and others), sums up the half-century work of the famous translator Grigory Mikhailovich Kruzhkov. English, American, French, and Spanish poems are given in chronological order, revealing the general trends of European poetry. The book begins with a kind of prologue: ancient Irish poems of the early Middle Ages — it was there where rhymed poetry first appeared, soon spreading throughout the continent. Grigory Kruzhkov is a winner of the State Prize of the Russian Federation, the award of the Guild of Translators "Master", the Big Bunin and Voloshin Prizes, etc.; Professor, member of the Shakespeare Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Honorary Doctor of Literature of the University of Dublin.