John Dryden (1631 – 1700)
Influential English poet, literary critic, and playwright.
Be kind to my remains; and oh defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend!
His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen.
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And welt'ring in his blood;
Deserted, at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed,
On the bare earth exposed he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
With ravished ears
The monarch hears;
Assumes the god,
Affects the nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.
Their heavenly harps a lower strain began, and in soft music mourn the fall of man.
Joy rul'd the day, and Love the night.
[Music] is inarticulate poesy.
Jealousy, the jaundice of the soul.
Oh that my Pow'r to Saving were confin’d:
Why am I forc’d, like Heav’n, against my mind,
To make Examples of another Kind?
Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.
A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
All, all of a piece throughout:
Thy chase had a beast in view;
Thy wars brought nothing about;
Thy lovers were all untrue.
'Tis well an old age is out,
And time to begin a new.
The trumpet's loud clangor
Excites us to arms.
It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. ...But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.
Lord of yourself, uncumbered with a wife.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown;
He rais’d a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
The wretched have no friends.
Bacchus, ever fair and ever young.
His courage foes, his friends his truth proclaim.