John Dryden

  • Under the Portrait of John Milton

    Prefixed to “Paradise Lost”
    THREE Poets, in three distant ages born,
    Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
    The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
    The next in majesty; in both the last.
    The force of nature could no further go;
    To make a third,...

  • Alexander’s Feast; or, the Power of Music

    An Ode
    ’T WAS at the royal feast, for Persia won
          By Philip’s warlike son:
          Aloft in awful state
          The godlike hero sate
            On his imperial throne:
          His valiant peers were placed around,
    Their brows with roses and...

  • A Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day, 1687

    From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
        This universal frame began;
      When Nature underneath a heap
          Of jarring atoms lay,
        And could not heave her head
    The tuneful voice was heard from high,
          Arise, ye more than dead!
    Then...

  • “Ah, how sweet”

    From “Tyrannic Love,” Act IV. Sc. 1.

    AH, how sweet it is to love!
      Ah, how gay is young desire!
    And what pleasing pains we prove
      When we first approach love’s fire!
    Pains of love be sweeter far
    Than all other pleasures are.

    Sighs which...

  • La fe católica

    Como la luna pálida y les astros
    Al viajador cansado, errante, solo,
    Con prestado fulgor en vano alumbran,
    Lo mismo al alma la Razón. Si aquellas
    Erráticas lumbreras nos descubren
    Lejano espacio, pero no el camino
    Que allá conduce, la Razón al hombre
    ...

  • Canto en honor de Santa Cecilia

    De armonía, de célica armonía,
    La fábrica brotó del universo.
     Cuando en revuelto caos
    De discordantes átomos yacía
     Atónita Natura
    Y alzar el ciego rostro...