[BORN at Winestead, near Hull, March 31, 1621; died in London, 1678. His poems were first collected by his widow, and published in a folio volume, 1681, but since that time about twenty-five new poems have been discovered. Mr. Grosart has published the complete works in the Fuller Worthies' Library.] YOUNG LOVE. COME, little infant, love me now, From cold jealousy and fears. Pretty surely 'twere to see By young Love old Time beguil'd, While our sportings are as free As the nurse's with the child. Common beauties stay fifteen; Such as yours should swifter move, Whose fair blossoms are too green Yet for lust, but not love. Love as much the snowy lamb, As the lusty bull or ram For his morning sacrifice. Now then love me: Time may take Thee before thy time away; Of this need we'll virtue make, And learn love before we may. So we win of doubtful fate, And, if good to us she meant, Thus do kingdoms, frustrating So to make all rivals vain, Now I crown thee with my love: Crown me with thy love again, And we both shall monarchs prove. A DROP OF DEW. SEE, how the orient dew, Shed from the bosom of the morn, Into the blowing roses, (Yet careless of its mansion new, For the clear region where 'twas born,} Round in itself incloses And, in its little globe's extent, Frames, as it can, its native element. How it the purple flower does slight, Scarce touching where it lies; But gazing back upon the skies, Shines with a mournful light, Like its own tear, Because so long divided from the sphere. Trembling, lest it grow impure; And, recollecting its own light, Does, in its pure and circling thoughts The greater heaven in a heaven less. It all about does upward bend. Congealed on earth; but does, dissolving, run Into the glories of the almighty sun. JOHN DRYDEN. 1631-1700. [BORN in 1631, at Aldwincle All Saints, in the valley of the Nen in Northamptonshire, of Puritan parentage; and educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He appears to have become a Londoner about the middle of the year 1657. At the Restoration he changed into an ardent royalist, and towards the close of 1663 married the daughter of a royalist nobleman, the Earl of Berkshire. In 1670 he was appointed Historiographer-Royal and PoetLaureate. After having hitherto been conspicuous as a dramatist and a panegyrical poet, he in 1631, by the publication of the First Part of Absalom and Achitophel, sprang into fame as a writer of satirical verse. In December, 1683, he was appointed Collector of Customs in the port of London. His offices were renewed to him on the accession of King James II., but his pension of £100 was not renewed till rather more than a year later. About the same time Dryden became a Roman Catholic: and in April, 1687, he published The Hind and the Panther. Deprived of both offices and pension by the Revolution of 1688, he again for a time wrote for the stage, but after a few years finally abandoned dramatic composition for translation. Some of his greatest lyrics likewise belong to his later years. He died at his house in Gerard Street, Soho, May 1, 1700, and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey.] Thou tread'st, with seraphim, the vast abyss: Whatever happy region is thy place, Cease thy celestial song a little space; Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine, Since heaven's eternal year is thine. Hear then a mortal muse thy praise rehearse, In no ignoble verse: But such as thy own voice did practise here, When thy first fruits of poesy were given, To make thyself a welcome inmate there; While yet a young probationer, And candidate of heaven. If by traduction came thy mind, Our wonder is the less to find A soul so charming from a stock so good; Thy father was transfused into thy blood: So wert thou born into a tuneful strain, An early, rich, and inexhausted vein. But if thy pre-existing soul Was form'd, at first, with myriads What can we say t' excuse our second fall? Let this thy vestal, heaven, atone for all: Her Arethusian stream remains unsoil'd, Unmix'd with foreign filth, and undefiled; Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child. Art she had none, yet wanted none; For nature did that want supply: So rich in treasures of her own, She might our boasted stores defy: Such noble vigor did her verse adoin, That it seem'd borrow'd, where 'twas only born. Her morals too were in her bosom bred, By great examples daily fed. Ev'n love (for love sometimes her muse exprest) Was but a lambent flame which play'd about her breast: Light as vapors of a morning dream, So cold herself, while she such warmth exprest, 'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream. When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound To raise the nations under ground; When in the valley of Jehoshaphat, The judging God shall close the book of fate; And there the last assizes keep, For those who wake, and those who sleep; When rattling bones together fly, From the four corners of the sky; When sinews on the skeletons are spread. Those clothed with flesh, and life inspire the dead; The sacred poets first shall hear the sound, And foremost from the tomb shall bound, For they are cover'd with the lightest ground; And straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing, Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet saint, before the choir | Usurp'd a patriot's all-atoning name; shalt go, As harbinger of heaven, the way to show, The way which thou so well hast learned below. THE CHARACTER OF THE EARL Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit: grace; A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide; Else why should he, with wealth and honors blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please; Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? In friendship false, implacable in hate, The triple bond is the Triple Alliance of 1667, undone by the alliance concluded with France in 1670, when Shaftesbury was a member of the Cabal. So easy still it proves, in factious times," With public zeal to cancel private crimes. How safe is treason, and how sacred ill, Where none can sin against the people's will! Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known, Since in another's guilt they find their own! Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge; The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge. In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abbethdin With more discerning eyes or hands more clean, Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress; Swift of despatch and easy of access. Oh! had he been content to serve the |