|
|
|
|
Best Poems From
JOHN HENRY DRYDEN
(1631 - 1700)
|
|
| |
|
|
57.
|
Epitaph On a Nephew, In Catworth Church, Huntingdonshire
Stay, stranger, stay, and drop one tear.
She always weeps, who laid him here;
And will do till her race is run;
His father's fifth, her only son.
John Henry Dryden
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
58.
|
Epitaph on Mrs. Margaret Paston, of Barningham, in Norfolk
So fair, so young, so innocent, so sweet,
So ripe a judgment, and so rare a wit,
Require at least an age in one to meet.
In her they met; but long they could not stay,
'Twas gold too fine to fix without allay.
Heaven's image was in her so well exprest,
Her very sight upbraided all the rest;
Too justly ravished from an age like this,
Now she is gone, the world is of a piece.
John Henry Dryden
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
59.
|
Epitaph on Sir Palmes Fairborne's Tomb in Westminster Abbey
Ye sacred relics, which your marble keep,
Here, undisturbed by wars, in quiet sleep;
Discharge the trust, which, when it was below,
Fairborne's undaunted soul did undergo,
And be the town's palladium from the foe.
Alive and dead these walls he will defend:
Great actions great examples must attend.
The Candian siege his early valour knew,
Where Turkish blood did his young hands imbrue.
From thence returning with deserved applause,
Against the Moors his well-fleshed sword he draws;
The same the courage, and the same the cause.
His youth and age, his life and death, combine,
As in some great and regular design,
All of a piece throughout, and all divine.
Still nearer heaven his virtues shone more bright,
Like rising flames expanding in their height;
The martyr's glory crowned the soldier's fight.
More bravely British general never fell,
Nor general's death was e'er revenged so well;
Which his pleased eyes beheld before their close,
Followed by thousand victims of his foes.
To his lamented loss, for time to come,
His pious widow consecrates this tomb.
John Henry Dryden
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
60.
|
Epitaph on the Monument of a Fair Maiden Lady, Who Died at Bath, and is There Interred
Below this marble monument is laid
All that heaven wants of this celestial maid.
Preserve, O sacred tomb, thy trust consigned;
The mould was made on purpose for the mind:
And she would lose, if, at the latter day,
One atom could be mixed with other clay;
Such were the features of her heavenly face,
Her limbs were formed with such harmonious grace:
So faultless was the frame, as if the whole
Had been an emanation of the soul;
Which her own inward symmetry revealed,
And like a picture shone, in glass annealed;
Or like the sun eclipsed, with shaded light;
Too piercing, else, to be sustained by sight.
Each thought was visible that rolled within;
As through a crystal case the figured hours are seen.
And heaven did this transparent veil provide,
Because she had no guilty thoughts to hide.
All white, a virgin-saint, she sought the skies,
For marriage, though it sullies not, it dyes.
High though her wit, yet humble was her mind;
As if she could not, or she would not find
How much her worth transcended all her kind.
Yet she had learned so much of heaven below,
That when arrived, she scarce had more to know;
But only to refresh the former hint,
And read her Maker in a fairer print.
So pious, that she had no time to spare
For human thoughts, but seemed confined to prayer;
Yet in such charities she passed the day,
'Twas wondrous how she found an hour to pray.
A soul so calm, it knew not ebbs or flows,
Which passion could but curl, not discompose.
A female softness, with a manly mind;
A daughter duteous, and a sister kind;
In sickness patient, and in death resigned.
John Henry Dryden
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|