I'm rather late to ancient narrative poems, but Dante's Commedia - as it is properly titled: not "Divine Comedy", but simply "Comedy", for the simple reason that it ends well - could very well be the most profound work of imagination ever produced by a human being, with a close second being the works of William Shakespeare. Most of the time, Shakespeare is working with dialogue only - whereas Dante deploys a vast toolkit of rhetorical devices: autobiography, satire, horror, and, in the words of one critic, "science fiction". Above all else, this is a work of spirituality, and one whose main intention, it seems, is to centre love at the very core of human existence as it has meaning for the creator, God. It is a joyous book, a book of profound beauty, and horror, and it's also never boring.