Six Centuries of English Poetry Part 28

4. =the Bridge.= The heads of traitors were displayed on London Bridge.

"How inferior is this pa.s.sage," says Dr. Dodd, "to Milton's animated description of the wild ceremonies of Moloch, which Dryden, however, seems to have here had in mind." See "Ode on the Nativity," stanza xxiii.

5. The simile in this stanza was doubtless intended to be very effective.

6. =key.= Quay. A bank, or ledge.

7. =Simois.= See Homer's "Iliad," Bk. XXI.

8. =gross.= Bulk.

REASON AND RELIGION.

[FROM "RELIGIO LAICI."]

Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers, Is Reason to the soul: and as on high, Those rolling fires discover but the sky, Not light us here; so Reason's glimmering ray Was lent, not to a.s.sure our doubtful way, But guide us upward to a better day.

And as those nightly tapers disappear, When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere; So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight; So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.

Some few whose light shone brighter, have been led From cause to cause, to nature's secret head; And found that one first principle must be, But what, or who, that Universal HE; Whether some soul incompa.s.sing this ball, Unmade, unmov'd, yet making, moving all, Or various atoms' interfering dance Leap'd into form, the n.o.ble work of chance, Or this great All was from eternity-- Not even the Stagirite himself could see, And Epicurus guess'd as well as he; As blindly groped they for a future state, As rashly judged of providence and fate.

In this wild maze their vain endeavors end: How can the less the greater comprehend?

Or finite Reason reach Infinity?

For what could fathom G.o.d were more than He.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

JOHN DRYDEN was born on the 9th of August, 1631, at Aldwincle All Saints, near Oundle in Northamptons.h.i.+re. He was educated at Westminster School, under the famous Dr. Busby, and at Trinity College, Cambridge.

At the age of twenty-six he went up to London with the intention of devoting himself to literature and politics. During the brief remaining years of the Commonwealth (1657-1660) he was nominally a friend to the Puritan party; and one of the first poems written by him was a series of "Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell." At the Restoration he at once espoused the cause of the Royalists; and his recent panegyric on the Protector did not prevent him from writing a poem, "Astraea Redux,"

in honor of the return of Charles the Second. In 1663 he married the Lady Elizabeth Howard, a daughter of the Earl of Berks.h.i.+re, a Royalist n.o.bleman. For several years he devoted himself chiefly to the writing of plays,--comedies, tragedies, and tragi-comedies. The comedies he wrote in prose; the earliest tragedies in blank verse, followed by several in rhyme, and, after these, others in blank verse. In 1670 he was appointed Poet-Laureate. In 1681, when nearly fifty years old, by the publication of "Absalom and Achitophel," he suddenly became famous as a satirical poet. He soon afterwards wrote "The Medal," another satire, directed against the Earl of Shaftesbury, and "Mac Flecknoe," aimed at Shadwell, the chief poet of the Opposition. At about the same time he produced "Religio Laici," a didactic poem explaining his religious opinions and defending the Church of England against dissenters, atheists, and Catholics. Not long after the accession of James II., Dryden, true to his policy of being always on the side of the ruling party, became a Catholic, and wrote "The Hind and the Panther," in which he eulogized many things that, in the former poem, he had ridiculed. His political career ended with the overthrow of James II., in 1688; but his literary activity continued unabated. The last years of his life were occupied in translating the works of Persius and Juvenal and the aeneid of Virgil. In 1697 he wrote "Alexander's Feast"; and his "modernizations" of some of Chaucer's poems appeared in 1700, the year of his death.

"If there is grandeur in the pomp of kings and the march of hosts," says A. W. Ward, "in the 'trumpet's loud clangor' and in tapestries and carpetings of velvet and gold, Dryden is to be ranked with the grandest of English poets. The irresistible impetus of an invective which never falls short or flat, and the savor of a satire which never seems dull or stale, give him an undisputed place among the most glorious of English wits."

"His descriptive power was of the highest," says Hales. "Our literature has in it no more vigorous portrait-gallery than that he has bequeathed it. His power of expression is beyond praise. There is always a singular _fitness_ in his language: he uses always the right word. He is one of our greatest masters of metre: metre was, in fact, no restraint to him, but rather it seems to have given him freedom. It has been observed that he argues better in verse than in prose; verse was the natural costume of his thoughts."

Professor Ma.s.son says: "Not only is Dryden the largest figure in one era of our literature: he is a very considerable figure also in our literature as a whole. Of all that he wrote, however, there is but a comparatively small portion that has won for itself a permanent place in our literature."

=Other Poems to be Read:= Absalom and Achitophel; Mac Flecknoe; Religio Laici; Threnodia Augustalis.

REFERENCES: Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_; Hazlitt's _English Poets_; Lowell's _Among My Books_; Macaulay's _Essay on John Dryden_; Taine's _English Literature_; Ma.s.son's _Three Devils and Other Essays_; Thackeray's _English Humorists_.

John Milton.

ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY.

I.

This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heav'ns eternal King, Of wedded Maid and Virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring: For so the holy Sages once did sing: That he our deadly forfeit should release,{1} And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II.

The glorious form, that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of majesty, Wherewith he wont{2} at Heav'ns high council-table To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, He laid aside; and, here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.{3}

III.

Say, heav'nly muse, shall not thy sacred vein Afford a present to the Infant G.o.d?

Hast thou no vers, no hymn, or solemn strein To welcome him to this his new abode Now while the Heav'n by the suns team untrod Hath took no print of the approaching light, And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

IV.

See how from far upon the eastern rode The star-led Wisards{4} haste with odours sweet; O run, prevent{5} them with thy humble ode, And lay it lowly at his blessed feet; Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet, And join thy voice unto the angel quire,{6} From out his secret altar toucht with hallow'd fire.

THE HYMN.

I.

It was the winter wilde While the Heav'n-born childe All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; Nature in aw of him Had doff't her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: It was no season then for her To wanton with the sun her l.u.s.ty paramour.{7}

II.

Onely with speeches fair She woo's the gentle air To hide her guilty front with innocent snow, And on her naked shame, Pollute with sinfull blame, The saintly veil of maiden{8} white to throw: Confounded that her Makers eyes Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

III.

But he, her fears to cease, Sent down the meek-eyed Peace, She, crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphear,{9} His ready harbinger,{10} With turtle{11} wing the amorous clouds dividing, And, waving wide her mirtle wand, She strikes a universall peace{12} through sea and land.

IV.