Poets, the magpies of the literary world, love to snatch bright and shiny things from their predecessors and claim them for their own. But does the resulting collection of trinkets justify this brazen robbery? Does it create something beautiful in its own right? Or is it just an open-and-shut case? These are the questions we will try to answer by looking at a selected history of poetic theft. John Milton’s Paradise Lost is a text that all aspiring poets are destined to know. (And if you are going to steal, why not steal from the best?) As the old saying goes, “Imitation is the sincerest form of larceny.” Even when caught red-handed, the poet might squawk: “I didn’t steal it! It’s mine!” Before we can prosecute, we must make a case. What is the evidence for the crime? Is it outright quotation or allusion, or something more subtle: a purloined mood, theme or tone? Crooks to be covered include: John Milton himself. He pilfered plenty from the Book of Genesis, as we will see from examining Book Nine of Paradise Lost. Then we will look at those poets who followed his felonious example. First, that Odd Couple of Romantic poetry: Lord Byron (“Don Juan”) and William Blake (“Songs of Innocence and Experience”). Next will be Walt Whitman (“O Captain! My Captain!”), who led so many American poets astray. Such as Emily Dickinson (“A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”). And Robert Frost (“Nothing Gold Can Stay”). We will conclude with a very complex case, TS Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” as we go “into our first world.” I am looking for a few determined sleuths (this is, after all, a seminar). Calabashes and deerstalkers encouraged, but not required.