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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419845" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Prologue Spoken at the Opening of The New House, March 26, 1674</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A plain-built house, after so long a stay, <br>Will send you half unsatisfied away; <br>When, fallen from your expected pomp, you find <br>A bare convenience only is designed. <br>You, who each day can theatres behold, <br>Like Nero's palace, shining all with gold, <br>Our mean ungilded stage will scorn, we fear, <br>And, for the homely room, disdain the cheer. <br>Yet now cheap druggets to a mode are grown, <br>And a plain suit, since we can make but one, <br>Is better than to be by tarnished gawdry known. <br>They, who are by your favours wealthy made, <br>With mighty sums may carry on the trade; <br>We, broken bankers, half destroyed by fire, <br>With our small stock to humble roofs retire; <br>Pity our loss, while you their pomp admire. <br>For fame and honour we no longer strive; <br>We yield in both, and only beg—to live; <br>Unable to support their vast expense, <br>Who build and treat with such magnificence, <br>That, like the ambitious monarchs of the age, <br>They give the law to our provincial stage. <br>Great neighbours enviously promote excess, <br>While they impose their splendour on the less; <br>But only fools, and they of vast estate, <br>The extremity of modes will imitate, <br>The dangling knee-fringe, and the bib-cravat. <br>Yet if some pride with want may be allowed, <br>We in our plainness may be justly proud; <br>Our Royal Master willed it should be so; <br>Whate 'er he's pleased to own, can need no show: <br>That sacred name gives ornament and grace, <br>And, like his stamp, makes basest metal pass. <br>'Twere folly now a stately pile to raise, <br>To build a playhouse while you throw down plays; <br>While scenes, machines, and empty operas reign, <br>And for the pencil you the pen disdain; <br>While troops of famished Frenchmen hither drive, <br>And laugh at those upon whose alms they live: <br>Old English authors vanish, and give place <br>To these new conquerors of the Norman race. <br>More tamely than your fathers you submit; <br>You're now grown vassals to them in your wit. <br>Mark, when they play, how our fine fops advance <br>The mighty merits of their men of France, <br>Keep time, cry Ben! and humour the cadence. <br>Well, please yourselves; but sure 'tis understood, <br>That French machines have ne'er done England good. <br>I would not prophesy our house's fate; <br>But while vain shows and scenes you overrate, <br>'Tis to be feared— <br>That, as a fire the former house o'erthrew, <br>Machines and tempests will destroy the new.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Dryden">John Dryden</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419845" data-title="Prologue Spoken at the Opening of The New House, March 26, 1674 de John Dryden" data-description="A plain-built house, after so long a stay, 
Will send you half unsatisfied away; 
When, fallen from your expected pomp, you find 
A bare convenience only is designed. 
You, who each day can theatres behold, 
Like Nero's palace, shining all with go..."></div>
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