This volume offers a representative yet concise selection of the work of the seventeenth-century poets, Malherbe, de Viau and Saint-Amant. It also provides supporting documentation to bring out the unique literary personality of each, and to help make their poetry as accessible as possible to a modern reader. It is designed to fill the gap between scholarly complete editions and more general anthologies which are rarely able to devote much space to any one author. The present volume was prompted by the success that this poetry enjoyed with readers who were relative newcomers to French verse.