With watchful eyes I ne'er behold the night, Mother of peace, but ah! to me of wars, And Cynthia, queen-like, shining through the woods, When straight those lamps come in my thought, whose light My judgment dazzled, passing brightest stars, And then mine eyes en-isle themselves with floods. Turn to their springs again first shall the floods, End these my days, indwellers of the woods, In vain the stars, indwellers of the woods, fierce is Death; His speedy greyhounds are Lust, sickness, envy, care, Strife that ne'er falls amiss, With all those ills which haunt us while we breathe. Of these the eager chase, Casts up his nets, and there we panting die. I REASON AND FEELING KNOW that all beneath the moon decays, And what by mortals in this world is brought, With toil of sp'rit, which are so dearly bought, Where sense and will envassal Reason's power: DEGENERACY OF THE WORLD HAT hapless hap had I for to be born WHA In these unhappy times, and dying days Of this now doting World, when Good decays, Love's quite extinct, and Virtue's held a-scorn! When such are only prized, by wretched ways, Who with a golden fleece them can adorn; When avarice and lust are counted praise, And bravest minds live orphan-like forlorn! Why was not I born in that golden age When gold was not yet known? and those black arts By which base worldlings vilely play their parts, With horrid acts staining Earth's stately stage? To have been then, O Heaven! 't had been my bliss; But bless me now, and take me soon from this. L THE BRIEFNESS OF LIFE OOK, how the flower which ling'ringly doth fade, The morning's darling late, the summer's queen, Spoiled of that juice which kept it fresh and green, As high as it did raise, bows low the head: Right so my life, contentment being dead, Or in their contraries but only seen, With swifter speed declines than erst it spread, And, blasted, scarce now shows what it hath been. Ο THE UNIVERSE F THIS fair volume which we World do name, If we the leaves and sheets could turn with care Of Him who it corrects and did it frame We clear might read the art and wisdom rare, Find out his power, which wildest powers doth tame, His justice, which proud rebels doth not spare, In every page and period of the same. But silly we, like foolish children, rest Well pleased with colored vellum, leaves of gold, On the great Writer's sense ne'er taking hold; D ON DEATH From Cypress Grove' EATH is a piece of the order of this all, a part of the life of this world; for while the world is the world, some creatures must die and others take life. Eternal things are raised far above this orb of generation and corruption where the First Matter, like a still flowing and ebbing sea, with diverse waves but the same water, keepeth a restless and never tiring current; what is below in the universality of its kind doth not in itself abide. If thou dost complain there shall be a time in the which thou shalt not be, why dost thou not too grieve that there was a time in which thou wast not, and so that thou art not as old as the enlivening planet of Time? excellent fabric of the universe itself shall one day suffer ruin, or change like ruin, and poor earthlings, thus to be handled, complain! The 4919 JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700) BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY OHN DRYDEN, the foremost man of letters of the period following the Restoration, was born at Aldwinkle, a village of Northamptonshire, on August 9th, 1631. He died May 1st, 1700. His life was therefore coeval with the closing period of the fierce controversies which culminated in the civil war and the triumph of the Parliamentary party; that, in turn, to be followed successively by the iron rule of Cromwell, by the restoration of the exiled Stuarts, and the reactionary tendencies in politics that accompanied that event; and finally with the effectual exclusion from the throne of this same family by the revolution of 1688, leaving behind, however, to their successors a smoldering Jacobite hostility that perpetually plotted the overthrow of the new government and later broke out twice into open revolt. All these changes of fortune, with their changes of opinion, are faithfully reflected in the productions of Dryden. To understand him thoroughly requires therefore an intimate familiarity with the civil and religious movements which characterize the whole period. Equally also do his writings, both creative and critical, represent the revolution of literary taste that took place in the latter half of the seventeenth century. It was while he was in the midst of his intellectual activity that French canons of criticism became largely the accepted rules, by which the value of English productions was tested. This was especially true of the drama. The study of Dryden is accordingly a study of the political and literary history of his times to an extent that is correspondingly true of no other English author before or since. His family, both on the father's and the mother's side, was in full sympathy with the party opposed to the court. The son was educated at Westminster, then under the mastership of Richard Busby, whose relentless use of the rod has made his name famous in that long line of flagellants who have been at the head of the great English public schools. From Westminster he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. There he received the degree of A. B. in January 1654. Later in that same decade - the precise date is not known - he took up his residence in London; and in London the rest of his life was almost entirely spent. |