[Suzerain of Sheol]

2. Paradise Lost -- John Milton

It isn't considered the greatest poem written in English for nothing. (Dante fans will quite ferociously dispute its crown as the greatest in *any* language).

Milton wasn't a humble guy, and he didn't aim low. The first stanza of the poem is him calling Homer and Virgil amateurs and claiming to have Almighty God as his personal muse (and the implication that he himself is a prophet...)

Regardless, he wanted to write the greatest epic ever, and, well, between the War in Heaven and the Fall of Man, you can't really get much more epic.

The man's breadth of knowledge is staggering, his abilities as a poet are at times sublime, and the sheer achievement in not only creating such an incredible epic, but at the same time deconstructing the epic form with the satirical portrait of Satan as a hero, provides endless depths of study.