Others

For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

He rais’d a mortal to the skies, She drew an angel down.

Sound the trumpets; beat the drums… Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes.

Genius must be born, and never can be taught.

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go. To make a third, she joined the former two.

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go. To make a third, she joined the former two.

The trumpet shall be heard on high The dead shall live, the living die, And Music shall untune the sky!

The soft complaining flute, In dying notes, discovers The woes of hopeless lovers.

The trumpet’s loud clangor Excites us to arms.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry, In order to their stations leap, And Music’s power obey. From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began: From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in Man.

O gracious God! how far have we Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!

Wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.

And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretense, But Shadwell 5 never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell’s genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day.

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

By viewing Nature, Nature’s handmaid Art, Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow.

Ah yet, ere I descend to the grave May I a small house and large garden have; And a few friends, and many books, both true, Both wise, and both delightful too!

A Babylonish dialect Which learned pedants much affect.

For all a rhetorician’s rules Teach nothing but to name his tools.

For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope.

All is best, though we oft doubt, What the unsearchable dispose Of highest Wisdom brings about.

Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, After offense returning, to regain Love once possess’d.