"Bid the laborious hind, Whose harden’d hands did long in tillage toil, Neglect the promised harvest of the soil."
John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Romantic writer Sir Walter Scott called him "Glorious John".
"A man so various, that he seem’d to be Not one, but all mankind’s epitome; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon."
"Why asks he what avails him not in fight, And would but cumber and retard his flight, In which his only excellence is placed? You give him death that interrupt his haste."
"And that one hunting, which the Devil designd For one fair female, lost him half the kind."
"I have a soul that like an ample shield Can take in all, and verge enough for more."
"Sound the trumpets; beat the drums... Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes."
"With ravished ears The monarch hears; Assumes the god, Affects the nod, And seems to shake the spheres."