John Dryden - Absalom and Achitophel

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Oh that my Pow'r to Saving were confin'd:
Why am I forc'd, like Heav'n, against my mind,
To make Examples of another Kind?
Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.

John Dryden

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

John Dryden

For who can be secure of private right,
If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might?
Nor is the people's judgement always true:
The most may err as grossly as the few.

John Dryden

And all to leave what with his toil he won
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son.

John Dryden

Youth, beauty, graceful action seldom fail:
But common interest always will prevail:
And pity never ceases to be shown
To him, who makes the people's wrongs his own.

John Dryden

A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas'd 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 alli'd;
And thin partitions do their bounds divide:
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave, what with his toil he won
To that unfeather'd, two-legg'd thing, a son:
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try;
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.

John Dryden

In squandering wealth was his peculiar art:
Nothing went unrewarded, but desert.
Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late:
He had his jest, and they had his estate.

John Dryden

Made still a blund'ring kind of melody;
Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin,
Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in.
Free from all meaning, whether good or bad,
And in one word, heroically mad.

John Dryden

Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.

John Dryden

Behold him setting in his western skies,
The shadows lengthening as the vapours rise.

John Dryden

In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin.

John Dryden

In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.

John Dryden

The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision and the old men's dream!

John Dryden

A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

John Dryden

Then Israel's monarch, after Heaven's own heart,
His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart
To wives and slaves: and, wide as his command,
Scattered his Maker's image through the land.

John Dryden

But far more numerous was the herd of such,
Who think too little, and who talk too much.

John Dryden

And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.

John Dryden

All empire is no more than power in trust.

John Dryden

Thus in a pageant-show a plot is made;
And peace itself is war in masquerade.

John Dryden

Railing and praising were his usual themes;
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes;
So over violent, or over civil,
That every man with him was God or devil.

John Dryden

Whate'er he did was done with so much ease,
In him alone, 'twas natural to please.

John Dryden

With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og,
For every inch that is not fool is rogue :
A monstrous mass of fuul corrupted matter,
As all the devils had spew'd to make the baiter.
When wine has given him courage to blaspheme,
He curses God, but God before curst him ;
And, if man could have reason, none has more.
That made his paunch so rich, and him so poor.

John Dryden

Of ancient race by birth, but nobler yet
In his own worth.

John Dryden

Of these the false Achitophel was first,
A name to all succeeding ages curst.
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay.

John Dryden

Nor is the people's judgment always true:
The most may err as grossly as the few.

John Dryden

Auspicious Prince! at whose nativity
Some royal planet rul'd the southern sky;
Thy longing country's darling and desire;
Their cloudy pillar, and their guardian fire:
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas, and shows the promis'd land:
Whose dawning day, in very distant age,
Has exercis'd the sacred prophet's rage:
The people's pray'r, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!

John Dryden

Your case no tame expedients will afford,
Resolve on death or conquest by the sword,
Which for no less a stake than life you draw,
And self-defence is Nature's eldest law.

John Dryden

Railing in other men may be a crime,
But ought to pass for mere instinct in him:
Instinct he follows and no further knows,
For to write verse with him is to transpose.

John Dryden