John Dryden

Of all the tyrannies on human kind The worst is that which persecutes the mind.

For truth has such a face and such a mien As to be loved needs only to be seen.

And doomed to death, though fated not to die.

She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.

So, when the last and dreadful Hour This crumbling Pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on high, The dead shall live, the living die, And musick shall untune the Sky.

The soft complaining flute, In dying notes, discovers The woes of hopeless lovers.

The trumpet's loud clangor Excites us to arms.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

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.

I can enjoy her while she's kind; But when she dances in the wind, And shakes the wings and will not stay, I puff the prostitute away: The little or the much she gave is quietly resign'd: Content with poverty, my soul I arm;

Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine, The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own; He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Farewell, too little, and too lately known, Whom I began to think and call my own: For sure our souls were near allied, and thine Cast in the same poetic mold with mine. One common note on either lyre did strike, And knaves and fools we …

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 man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.

Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command Some peaceful province in acrostic land. There thou mayst wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretense, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail …

All human things are subject to decay, And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

Made still a blund'ring kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in. Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And in one word, heroically mad.

Beware the fury of a patient man.

Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.

Nor is the people's judgment always true: The most may err as grossly as the few.

Thus in a pageant-show a plot is made; And peace itself is war in masquerade.

His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen.