The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 388 pages of information about The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Volume 1.

The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 388 pages of information about The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Volume 1.

    Our setting sun, from his declining seat,
  Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat: 
  And, when his love was bounded in a few
  That were unhappy that they might be true, 90
  Made you the favourite of his last sad times,
  That is a sufferer in his subjects’ crimes: 
  Thus those first favours you received, were sent,
  Like heaven’s rewards in earthly punishment. 
  Yet fortune, conscious of your destiny,
  Even then took care to lay you softly by;
  And wrapp’d your fate among her precious things,
  Kept fresh to be unfolded with your king’s. 
  Shown all at once, you dazzled so our eyes,
  As new born Pallas did the gods surprise, 100
  When, springing forth from Jove’s new-closing wound,
  She struck the warlike spear into the ground;
  Which sprouting leaves did suddenly enclose,
  And peaceful olives shaded as they rose.

    How strangely active are the arts of peace,
  Whose restless motions less than war’s do cease! 
  Peace is not freed from labour but from noise;
  And war more force, but not more pains employs;
  Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,
  That, like the earth, it leaves our sense behind; 110
  While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere,
  That rapid motion does but rest appear. 
  For, as in nature’s swiftness, with the throng
  Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,
  All seems at rest to the deluded eye,
  Moved by the soul of the same harmony,—­
  So, carried on by your unwearied care,
  We rest in peace, and yet in motion share. 
  Let envy then those crimes within you see,
  From which the happy never must be free; 120
  Envy, that does with misery reside,
  The joy and the revenge of ruin’d pride. 
  Think it not hard, if at so cheap a rate
  You can secure the constancy of fate,
  Whose kindness sent what does their malice seem,
  By lesser ills the greater to redeem. 
  Nor can we this weak shower a tempest call,
  But drops of heat, that in the sunshine fall.

  You have already wearied fortune so,
  She cannot further be your friend or foe; 130
  But sits all breathless, and admires to feel
  A fate so weighty, that it stops her wheel. 
  In all things else above our humble fate,
  Your equal mind yet swells not into state,
  But, like some mountain in those happy isles,
  Where in perpetual spring young nature smiles,
  Your greatness shows:  no horror to affright,
  But trees for shade, and flowers to court the sight: 
  Sometimes the hill submits itself a while
  In small descents, which do its height beguile:  140
  And sometimes mounts, but so as billows play,
  Whose rise not hinders, but makes short our way. 
  Your brow, which does no fear of thunder

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The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.