John Dryden (1631 – 1700)
Influential English poet, literary critic, and playwright.
Men met each other with erected look,
The steps were higher that they took;
Friends to congratulate their friends made haste,
And long inveterate foes saluted as they passed.
A brave man scorns to quarrel once a day;
Like Hectors in at every petty fray.
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again.
When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!
Auspicious Prince! at whose nativity
Some royal planet rul'd the southern sky;
Thy longing country's darling and desire;
Their cloudy pillar, and their guardian fire:
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas, and shows the promis'd land:
Whose dawning day, in very distant age,
Has exercis'd the sacred prophet's rage:
The people's pray'r, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!
The sword within the scabbard keep,
And let mankind agree.
[T]he Famous Rules which the French call, Des Trois Unitez, or, The Three Unities, which ought to be observ'd in every Regular Play; namely, of Time, Place, and Action.
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
When nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
'Arise, ye more than dead!'
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.
Fairest Isle, all isles excelling,
Seat of pleasures, and of loves;
Venus here will choose her dwelling,
And forsake her Cyprian groves.
Here lies my wife:here let her lie!
Now she's at rest, and so am I.
He trudged along unknowing what he sought,
And whistled as he went, for want of thought.
An hour will come, with pleasure to relate
Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate.
They say everything in the world is good for something.
This is the porcelain clay of humankind.
By viewing Nature, Nature's handmaid Art,
Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow.
With all this bulk there 's nothing lost in Og,
For every inch that is not fool is rogue :
A monstrous mass of fuul corrupted matter,
As all the devils had spew'd to make the baiter.
When wine has given him courage to blaspheme,
He curses God, but God before curst him ;
And, if man could have reason, none has more.
That made his paunch so rich, and him so poor.
More Safe, and much more modest 'tis, to say
God wou'd not leave Mankind without a way:
And that the Scriptures, though not every where
Free from Corruption, or intire, or clear,
Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, intire,
In all things which our needfull Faith require.
If others in the same Glass better see
'Tis for Themselves they look, but not for me:
For my Salvation must its Doom receive
Not from what others, but what I believe.
A knockdown argument: 'tis but a word and a blow.
Whate’er he did was done with so much ease,
In him alone 't was natural to please.