The Works of John Dryden

'Tis pleasant, safely to behold from shore
The rolling ship, and hear the tempest roar :
Not that another's pain is our delight;
But pains unfelt produce the pleasing sight.
"T is pleasant also to behold from far

The moving legions mingled in the war. [guide
But much more sweet thy labouring steps to
To virtue's heights, with wisdom well supplied,
And all the magazines of learning fortified:
From thence to look below on humankind,
Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind :
To see vain fools ambitiously contend
For wit and power; their last endeavours bend
To outshine each other, waste their time and
health

In search of honour, and pursuit of wealth.
O wretched man! in what a mist of life,
Inclos'd with dangers and with noisy strife,
He spends his little span; and overfeeds

[tain;

His cramm'd desires with more than nature
For nature wisely stints our appetite, [needs!
And craves no more than undisturb'd delight:
Which minds, unmix'd with cares and fears ob-
A soul serene, a body void of pain.
So little this corporeal frame requires;
So bounded are our natural desires,
That wanting all, and setting pain aside,
With bare privation sense is satisfied.
If golden sconces hang not on the walls,
To light the costly suppers and the balls;
If the proud palace shines not with the state
Of burnish'd bowls, and of reflected plate;
If well tun'd harps, nor the more pleasing sound
Of voices, from the vaulted roofs rebound;

Yet on the grass, beneath a poplar shade,
By the cool stream our careless limbs are laid;
With cheaper pleasures innocently bless'd,
When the warm spring with gaudy flowers is
Nor will the raging fever's fire abate, [dress'd.
With golden canopies and beds of state:
But the poor patient will as soon be sound
On the hard mattrass, or the mother ground.
Then since our bodies are not eas'd the more
By birth, or power, or fortune's wealthy store,
"T is plain, these useless toys of every kind
As little can relieve the labouring mind:
Unless we could suppose the dreadful sight
Of marshal'd legions moving to the fight,
Could, with their sound and terrible array,
Expel our fears, and drive the thoughts of death
But, since the supposition vain appears, [away.
Since clinging cares, and trains of inbred fears,
Are not with sounds to be affrighted thence,
But in the midst of pomp pursue the prince,
Not aw'd by arms, but in the presence bold,
Without respect to purple, or to gold;
Why should not we these pageantries despise ;
Whose worth but in our want of reason lies?
For life is all in wand'ring errors led;
And just as children are surpris'd with dread,
And tremble in the dark, so riper years
E'en in broad daylight are possess'd with fears;
And shake at shadows fanciful and vain,
As those which in the breasts of children reign.
These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell,
No rays of outward sunshine can dispel ;
But nature and right reason must display
Their beams abroad, and bring the darksome
soul to day.

THE LATTER PART OF THE THIRD BOOK OF LUCRETIUS;

AGAINST THE FEAR OF DEATH.

WHAT has this bugbear death to frighten men,
If souls can die, as well as bodies can?
For, as before our birth we felt no pain,
When Punic arms infested land and main,
When heaven and earth were in confusion
For the debated empire of the world, [hurl'd,
Which aw'd with dreadful expectation lay,
Sure to be slaves, uncertain who should sway:
So, when our mortal flame shall be disjoin'd,
The lifeless lump uncoupled from the mind,
From sense of grief and pain we shall be free
We shall not feel, because we shall not be.
Though earth in seas, and seas in heaven were

lost,

We should not move, we only should be tost.

Nay, c'en suppose when we have suffer'd fate,
The soul could feel in her divided state,
What's that to us? for we are only we
While souls and bodies in one frame agree.
Nay, though our atoms should revolve by
chance,

And matter leap into the former dance;
Though time our life and motion could restore,
And make our bodies what they were before,
What gain to us would all this bustle bring?
The new-made man would be another thing.
When once an interrupting pause is made,
That individual being is decay'd.

We, who are dead and gone, shall bear no part
In all the pleasures, nor shall feel the smart,
Which to that other mortal shall accrue,
Whom of our matter time shall mould anew.
For backward if you look on that long space
Of ages past, and view the changing face
Of matter, toss'd and variously combin'd
In sundry shapes, 't is easy for the mind [been
From thence to infer, that seeds of things have
In the same order as they now are seen:
Which yet our dark remembrance cannot trace,
Because a pause of life, a gaping space,
Has come betwixt, where memory lies dead,
And all the wandering motions from the sense
For whosoe'er shall in misfortunes live, [are fled.
Must be, when those misfortunes shall arrive;
And since the man who is not, feels not woe,
(For death exempts him, and wards off the blow,
Which we,
the living, only feel and bear)
What is there left for us in death to fear?
When once that pause of life has come between,
'T is just the same as we had never been.
And therefore if a man bemoan his lot,
That after death his mouldering limbs shall rot,
Or flames, or jaws of beasts devour his mass,
Know, he's an unsincere, unthinking ass.
A secret sting remains within his mind;
The fool is to his own cast offals kind.
He boasts no sense can after death remain;
Yet makes himself a part of life again;
As if some other He could feel the pain,
If, while we live, this thought molest his head,
What wolf or vulture shall devour me dead?
He wastes his days in idle grief, nor can
Distinguish 'twixt the body and the man;
But thinks himself can still himself survive ;
And, what when dead he feels not, feels alive.
Then he repines that he was born to die,
Nor knows in death there is no other He,
No living He remains his grief to vent,
And o'er his senseless carcass to lament.
If after death 't is painful to be torn,

By birds, and beasts, then why not so to burn,
Or drench'd in floods of honey to be soak'd,
Imbalm'd to be at once preserv'd and chok'd;

Or on an airy mountain's top to lie,
Expos'd to cold and heaven's inclemency;
Or crowded in a tomb to be oppress'd
With monumental marble on thy breast?
But to be snatch'd from all the household joys,
From thy chaste wife, and thy dear prattling boys,
Whose little arms about thy legs are cast,
And climbing for a kiss prevent their mothers'
haste,

Inspiring secret pleasure through thy breast,
Ah! these shall be no more: thy friends op-

press'd

Thy care and courage now no more shall free,
Ah! wretch, thou criest, ah! miserable me!
One woful day sweeps children, friends, and wife
And all the brittle blessings of my life!
Add one thing more, and all thou say'st is true,
Thy want and wish of them is vanish'd too :
Which, well consider'd, were a quick relief
To all thy vain imaginary grief.
For thou shalt sleep, and never wake again,
And, quitting life, shalt quit thy living pain.
But we, thy friends, shall all those sorrows find,
Which in forgetful death thou leav'st behind;
No time shall dry our tears, nor drive thee from
our mind.

The worst that can befall thee, measur'd right,
Is a sound slumber, and a long good night.
Yet thus the fools, that would be thought the wits
Disturb their mirth with melancholy fits: [flow,
When healths go round, and kindly brimmers
Till the fresh garlands on their foreheads glow,
They whine, and cry, Let us make haste to live,
Short are the joys that human life can give.
Eternal preachers, that corrupt the draught,
And pall the god, that never thinks, with thought;
Idiots with all that thought, to whom the worst
Of death is want of drink, and endless thirst,
Or any fond desire as vain as these.
For, e'en in sleep, the body, wrapt in ease,
Supinely lies, as in the peaceful grave;
And, wanting nothing, nothing can it crave.
Were that sound sleep eternal, it were death;
Yet the first atoms then, the seeds of breath,
Are moving near to sense; we do but shake
And rouse that sense, and straight we are
awake.

Then death to us, and death's anxiety
Is less than nothing, if a less could be.
For then our atoms, which in order lay,
Are scatter'd from their heap, and puff'd a way.
And never can return into their place,
When once the pause of life has left an empty

And sigh and sob, that thou shalt be no more?
For if thy life were pleasant heretofore,
If all the bounteous blessings, I could give,
Thou hast enjoy'd, if thou hast known to live,
And pleasure not leak'd through thee like a
sieve;

Why dost thou not give thanks as at a plenteous
feast,

Cramm'd to the throat with life, and rise and

take thy rest?

But if my blessings thou hast thrown away,
Ifindigested joys pass'd thro',and would not stay,
Why dost thou wish for more to squander still?
If life be grown a load, a real ill,

And I would all thy cares and labours end,
Lay down thy burden, fool, and know thy friend.
To please thee, I have emptied all my store,
I can invent, and can supply no more;
But run the round again, the round I ran before.
Suppose thou art not broken yet with years,
Yet still the selfsame scene of things appears,
And would be ever, couldst thou ever live;
For life is still but life, there's nothing new to
give."

What can we plead against so just a bill?
We stand convicted, and our cause goes ill.
But if a wretch, a man oppress'd by fate,
Should beg of Nature to prolong his date,
She speaks aloud to him with more disdain,
Be still, thou martyr fool, thou covetous of pain.
But if an old decrepit sot lament; [tent!
What thou (she cries) who hast out-liv'd con-
Dost thou complain, who hast enjoy'd my store?
But this is still the effect of wishing more.
Unsatisfied with all that Nature brings;
Loathing the present, liking absent things;
From hence it comes, thy vain desires, at strife
Within themselves, have tantaliz'd thy life.
And ghastly death appear'd before thy sight,
Ere thou hast gorg'd thy soul and senses with
delight.

Now leave those joys, unsuiting to thy age,
To a fresh comer, and resign the stage;
Is Nature to be blam'd if thus she chide?
No sure; for 't is her business to provide
Against this ever-changing frame's decay,
New things to come, and old to pass away.
One being, worn, another being makes; [takes:
Chang'd, but not lost; for Nature gives and
New matter must be found for things to come,
And these must waste like those, and follow
Nature's doom.

Then tell me,
fool, what part in them thou hast?
Thus may'st thou judge the future by the past.
What horror seest thou in that quiet state,
What bugbear dreams to fright thee after fate?
No ghost, no goblins, that still passage keep;
But all is there serene, in that eternal sleep.
For all the dismal tales that Poets tell,
Are verified on earth, and not in hell.
No Tantalus looks up with fearful eye,
Or dreads the impending rock to crush him from
on high:
[hours,
But fear of chance on earth disturbs our easy
Or vain imagin'd wrath of vain imagin'd powers.
No Tityus torn by vultures lies in hell;

Nor could the lobes of his rank liver swell
To that prodigious mass, for their eternal meal:
Not though his monstrous bulk had cover'd o'er
Nine spreading acres, or nine thousand more;
Not though the globe of earth had been the giant's
Nor in eternal torments could he lie: [floor.
Nor could his corpse sufficient food supply.
But he's the Tityus, who by love opprest,
Or tyrant passion preying on his breast,
And ever anxious thoughts, is robb'd of rest.
The Sisyphus is he, whom noise and strife
Seduce from all the soft retreats of life,
To vex the government, disturb the laws:
Drunk with the fumes of popular applause,
He courts the giddy crowd to make him great,
And sweats and toils in vain, to mount the sove-
reign seat.

For still to aim at power, and still to fail,
Ever to strive, and never to prevail,
What is it, but, in reason's true account,
To heave the stone against the rising mount?
Which urg'd, and labour'd, and forc'd up with
pain,
[along the plain.
Recoils, and rolls impetuous down, and smokes
Then still to treat thy ever-craving mind
With every blessing, and of every kind,
Yet never fill thy ravening appetite;
Though years and seasons vary thy delight,
Yet nothing to be seen of all the store,
But still the wolf within thee barks for more,
This is the fable's moral, which they tell
Of fifty foolish virgins damn'd in hell
To leaky vessels, which the liquor spill; [fill.
To vessels of their sex, which none could ever
As for the dog, the furies, and their snakes,
The gloomy caverns, and the burning lakes,
And all the vain infernal trumpery,
They neither are, nor were, nor e'er can be.

All things, like thee, have time to rise and rot; But here on earth the guilty have in view
And from each other's ruin are begot :
For life is not confin'd to him or thee:

T is given to all for use, to none for property.
Consider former ages past and gone,
Whose circles ended long ere thine begun,

The mighty pains to mighty mischiefs due;
Racks, prisons, poisons, the Tarpeian rock,
Stripes, hangmen, pitch, and suffocating smoke
And last, and most, if these were cast behind,
The avenging horror of a conscious mind,

Whose deadly fear anticipates the blow,
And sees no end of punishment and woe;
But looks for more, at the last gasp of breath:
This makes a hell on earth, and life a death.
Meantime when thoughts of death disturb thy
head;

Consider, Ancus, great and good, is dead;
Ancus, thy better far, was born to die;
And thou, dost thou bewail mortality?
So many monarchs with their mighty state,
Who rul'd the world, were over-rul'd by fate.
That haughty king, who lorded o'er the main,
And whose stupendous bridge did the wild
waves restrain,
[wreck,
(In vain they foam'd, in vain they threaten'd
While his proud legions march'd upon their
back :)

Him death, a greater monarch, overcame;
Nor spar'd his guards the more, for their immor-
tal name.

The Roman chief, the Carthaginian dread,
Scipio, the thunderbolt of war, is dead, [led.
And, like a common slave, by fate in triumph
The founders of invented arts are lost;
And wits, who made eternity their boast.
Where now is Homer, who possess'd the throne?
The immortal work remains, the immortal
author's gone.
Democritus, perceiving age invade,

His body weaken'd, and his mind decay'd,
Obey'd the summons with a cheerful face;
Made haste to welcome death, and met him half

the race.

That stroke e'en Epicurus could not bar,
Though he in wit surpass'd mankind, as far
As does the midday sun the midnight star.
And thou, dost thou disdain to yield thy breath,
Whose very life is little more than death?
More than one half by lazy sleep possest;
And when awake, thy soul but nods at best,
Day-dreams and sickly thoughts revolving in thy
breast.

Eternal troubles haunt thy anxious mind,
Whose cause and cure thou never hop'st to find;
But still uncertain, with thyself at strife,
Thou wanderest in the labyrinth of life.
O, if the foolish race of man, who find
A weight of cares still pressing on their mind,
Could find as well the cause of this unrest,
And all this burden lodg'd within the breast;
Sure they would change their course, nor live as
Uncertain what to wish or what to vow. [now,
Uneasy both in country and in town,
They search a place to lay their burden down.
One, restless in his palace, walks abroad,
And vainly thinks to leave behind the load:
But straight returns for he's as restless there;
And finds there's no relief in open air.

Another to his villa would retire,

And spurs as hard as if it were on fire;
No sooner enter'd at his country door,
But he begins to stretch, and yawn, and snore,
Or seeks the city which he left before.
Thus every man o'erworks his weary will,
To shun himself, and to shake off his ill;
The shaking fit returns,and hangs upon him still.
No prospect of repose, nor hope of ease
The wretch is ignorant of his disease; [spare-
Which known would all his fruitless trouble
For he would know the world not worth his care;
Then would he search more deeply for the cause;
And study Nature well, and Nature's laws :
For in this moment lies not the debate,
But on our future, fix'd, eternal state; [keep,
That never-changing state, which all must
Whom death has doom'd to everlasting sleep.
Why are we then so fond of mortal life,
Beset with dangers, and maintain'd with strife?
A life, which all our care can never save;
One fate attends us, and one common grave.
Besdes, we tread but a perpetual round;
We ne'er strike out, but beat the former ground,
And the same mawkish joys in the same track
are found.

For still we think an absent blessing best,
Which cloys, and is no blessing when possest;
A new arising wish expels it from the breast.
The feverish thirst of life increases still; [fill;
We call for more and more, and never have our
Yet know not what to-morrow we shall try,
What dregs of life in the last draught may lie :
Nor, by the longest life we can attain,
One moment from the length of death we gain;
For all behind belongs to his eternal reign.
When once the fates have cut the mortal thread,
The man as much to all intents is dead,
Who dies to-day, and will as long be so,
As he who died a thousand years ago.

FROM THE FIFTH BOOK OF
LUCRETIUS.

Tum porro puer, &c.

THUS, like a sailor by a tempest hurl'd
Ashore, the babe is shipwreck'd on the world;
Naked he lies, and ready to expire;
Helpless of all that human wants require ;
Expos'd upon inhospitable earth,
From the first moment of his hapless birth.
Straight with foreboding cries he fills the room;
Too true presages of his future doom.
But flocks and herds, and every savage beast,
By more indulgent nature are increased,

They want no rattles for their froward mood,
Nor nurse to reconcile them to their food,
With broken words; nor winter blasts they fear,
Nor change their habits with the changing year:
Nor, for their safety, citadels prepare,
Nor forge the wicked instruments of war:
Unlabour'd Earth her bounteous treasure grants,
And nature's lavish hand supplies their com-

mon wants.

TRANSLATIONS FROM HORACE.

THE THIRD ODE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE;

INSCRIBED TO THE EARL OF ROSCOMMON,
ON HIS INTENDED VOYAGE TO IRELAND.

So may the auspicious Queen of Love,
And the Twin Stars, the seed of Jove,
And he who rules the raging wind,
To thee, O sacred ship, be kind;
And gentle breezes fill thy sails,
Supplying soft Etesian gales:

As thou, to whom the Muse commends
The best of poets and of friends,
Dost thy committed pledge restore,
And land him safely on the shore;
And save the better part of me
From perishing with him at sea;
Sure he, who first the passage tried,
In harden'd oak his heart did hide,
And ribs of iron arm'd his side;
Or his at least, in bollow wood
Who tempted first the briny flood:
Nor fear'd the winds' contending roar,
Nor billows beating on the shore;
Nor Hyades portending rain;
Nor all the tyrants of the main.
What form of death could him affright,
Who unconcern'd, with steadfast sight,
Could view the surges mounting steep,
And monsters rolling in the deep!
Could through the ranks of ruin go,
With storns above and rocks below!
In vain did Nature's wise command
Divide the waters from the land,
If daring ships and men profane
Invade the inviolable main;
The eternal fences over-leap,
And pass at will the boundless deep.
No toil, no hardship can restrain
Ambitious man, inur'd to pain;

THE NINTH ODE OF THE FIRST
BOOK OF HORACE.

BEHOLD yon mountain's hoary height,
Made higher with new mounts of snow;
Again behold the winter's weight

Oppress the labouring woods below:
And streams, with icy fetters bound,
Benumb'd and cramp'd to solid ground.
With well-heap'd logs dissolve the cold,
And feed the genial hearth with fires
Produce the wine, that makes us bold,
And sprightly wit and love inspires:
For what hereafter shall betide,
God, if't is worth his care, provide.
Let hiin alone, with what he made,

To toss and turn the world below;
At his command the storms invade;

The winds by his commission blow; Till with a nod he bids 'em cease, And then the calm returns, and all is peace. To-morrow and her works defy,

Lay hold upon the present hour, And snatch the pleasures passing by,

To put them out of fortune's power:
Nor love, nor love's delights disdain;
Whate'er thou gett'st to-day is gain.
Secure those golden early joys,

That youth unsour'd with sorrow bears,
Ere withering time the taste destroys,
With sickness and unwieldy years.
For active sports, for pleasing rest,
This is the time to be possess'd;
The best is but in season best.

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The Works of John Dryden: In Verse and Prose, with a Life, Volume 1