1This books offers a comprehensive sampling of the major genres of poetry and prose written from about A.D. 600 to the end of the nineteenth century. The book contains a dazzling array of myths and legends, essays and biographies, love poems and Zen poems, satirical tales and tales of wonder, stories of adventure and of heroism, as well as quieter works treating the farmer's works and days and the pleasures and sorrows of the simple life.