Palamon and Arcite / John Dryden

To Her Grace the Duchess of Ormond, with the following poem of Palamon and Arcite.

-MADAM,

The bard who first adorned our native tongue Tuned to his British lyre this ancient song; Which Homer might without a blush reherse, And leaves a doubtful palm in Virgil's verse: He matched their beauties, where they most excel; Of love sung better, and of-arms as well.

His Majesties Declaration Defended / John Dryden

With an Introduction by Godfrey Davies.

INTRODUCTION

Wherever English literature is studied, John Dryden is recognized as the author of some of the greatest political satires in the language. Until recently the fact has been overlooked that before he wrote the first of these satires, Absalom and Achitophel, he had entered the political arena with the prose tract here reproduced. The proof that the Historiographer Royal contributed to the anti-Whig propaganda of the spring of 1681 depends partly on contemporary or near-contemporary statements but principally on internal evidence. An article by Professor Roswell G. Ham (The Review of English Studies, XI (1935), 284-98; Hugh Macdonald, John Dryden, A Bibliography, p. 167) demonstrated Dryden's authorship so satisfactorily that it is unnecessary to set forth here the arguments that established this thesis. The time when Dryden was composing his defence of the royal Declaration is approximately fixed from the reference to it on June 22, 1681, in The Observator, which had noted the Whig pamphlet Dryden was answering under the date of May 26.

Astræa Redux / John Dryden

A POEM ON THE HAPPY RESTORATION AND RETURN OF HIS SACRED MAJESTY CHARLES II., 1660.

"Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna."--VIRG.

"The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes,

Renews its finish'd course; Saturnian times

Roll round again."

A Song For St. Cecilia's Day / John Dryden

 1

  From harmony,[1] from heavenly harmony

      This universal frame[2] began.

    When Nature underneath a heap

      Of jarring atoms lay,

    And could not heave her head,                          5

  The tuneful voice was heard from high:

      "Arise, ye more than dead!"

  Then cold and hot and moist and dry

    In order to their stations leap,

      And Music's power obey.                             10