John Henry Dryden

So fair, so young, so innocent, so sweet,
So ripe a judgment, and so rare a wit,
Require at least an age in one to meet.
In her they met; but long they could not stay, 'Twas gold too fine to fix without allay.

And now 'tis time; for their officious haste,
Who would before have borne him to the sky,
Like eager Romans ere all rites were past Did let too soon the sacred eagle fly.
Though our best notes are treason to his fame Join'd with…

Of all the cities in Romanian lands,
The chief and most renowned Ravenna stands;
Adorned in ancient times with arms and arts,
And rich inhabitants with generous hearts.

Enter
US
Chronos,
Chronos, mend thy pace

You charm'd me not with that fair face
Though it was all divine:
To be another's is the grace,
That makes me wish you mine.

Creator Spirit, by whose aid
The world's foundations first were laid,
Come, visit ev'ry pious mind;
Come, pour thy joys on human kind;

Farewell, too little and too lately known,
Whom I began to think and call my own;
For sure our souls were near allied, and
Cast in the same poetic mould with mine.

Gallants, a bashful poet bids me say,
He's come to lose his maidenhead to-day.
Be not too fierce; for he's but green of age,
And ne'er, till now, debauched upon the stage.

Must noble Hastings immaturely die,
The honour of his ancient family,
Beauty and learning thus together meet,
To bring a winding for a wedding sheet?

(Comus.) Your hay it is mow'd, and your corn is reap'd;
Your barns will be full, and your hovels heap'd:
Come, my boys, come;
Come, my boys, come;

Dedicated to the Memory of the Late Countess of Abingdon.
As when some great and gracious monarch dies,
Soft whispers first and mournful
Among the sad attendants; then the

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.

Below this marble monument is laid All that heaven wants of this celestial maid.
Preserve,
O sacred tomb, thy trust consigned;
The mould was made on purpose for the mind:

Fair Iris I love, and hourly I die,
But not for a lip, nor a languishing eye:
She's fickle and false, and there we agree,
For I am as false and as fickle as she.

He who, in impious times, undaunted stood,
And 'midst rebellion durst be just and good;
Whose arms asserted, and whose sufferings more Confirmed the cause for which he fought before,
Rests here, rewarded by an heavenly prince,

The longest tyranny that ever swayed,
Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed Their free-born reason to the Stagyrite,
And made his torch their universal light.
So truth, while only one supplied the state

(OR A
AN'S
TH)
Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars

Stay, stranger, stay, and drop one tear.
She always weeps, who laid him here;
And will do till her race is run;
His father's fifth, her only son.

Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes;
When monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes:
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings:

Fair, kind, and true, a treasure each alone,
A wife, a mistress, and a friend, in one;
Rest in this tomb, raised at thy husband's cost,
Here sadly summing, what he had, and lost.

All human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:

Men are but children of a larger growth;
Our appetites are apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving too, and full as vain;
And yet the soul, shut up in her dark room,

Why should a foolish marriage vow,
Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now,
When passion is decayed?

Sylvia the fair, in the bloom of fifteen,
Felt an innocent warmth as she lay on the green:
She had heard of a pleasure, and something she
By the towsing and tumbling and touching her breast: