: Selections from Five English Poets by Burns Robert Contributor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Contributor Dryden John Contributor Goldsmith Oliver Contributor Gray Thomas Contributor Litchfield Mary E Mary Elizabeth Editor - English poetry

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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The following list may prove useful to those who wish to know more of the poets represented in this volume than can be learned from the short sketches of their lives which it includes:

FIVE ENGLISH POETS

JOHN DRYDEN

Although Dryden is but little read in these days, he fills an important place in the history of English literature. As the foremost writer of the last third of the seventeenth century, he is the connecting link between Milton, "the last of the Elizabethans," and Pope, the chief poet of the age of Queen Anne. He was born in Northamptonshire, and had the good fortune to live in the country until his thirteenth year, when he was sent to the famous Westminster School, in what is now the heart of London. A few years after finishing his course at Cambridge University he went back to London, and lived there chiefly during the rest of his long and busy life. At the age of thirty-nine he was made poet-laureate and historiographer-royal, although his best work was not done until after he was fifty years old. From Milton's death, 1674, until his own in 1700, "Glorious John," as he was called, reigned without a rival in English letters; and one can picture him as a short, stout, somewhat ruddy-faced gentleman, sitting in Will's Coffee House surrounded by younger authors who vie with one another for the honor of a pinch out of his snuffbox. He died at the age of sixty-nine, and was buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer and Cowley.

A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY

From harmony, from heavenly harmony This universal frame 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 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. 15

What passion cannot Music raise and quell? When Jubal struck the corded shell, His list'ning brethren stood around, And, wond'ring, on their faces fell To worship that celestial sound, 20 Less than a god they thought there could not dwell Within the hollow of that shell That spoke so sweetly and so well. What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

The trumpet's loud clangor 25 Excites us to arms, With shrill notes of anger And mortal alarms. The double double double beat Of the thundering drum 30 Cries, "Hark, the foes come! Charge, charge, 't is too late to retreat!"

The soft complaining flute In dying notes discovers The woes of hopeless lovers, 35 Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute.

Sharp violins proclaim Their jealous pangs and desperation, Fury, frantic indignation, Depth of pains and height of passion, 40 For the fair disdainful dame.

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