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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>To my Honoured Kinsman John Driden, of Chesterton, in the County of Huntingdon, Esq.</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">How blessed is he, who leads a country life, <br>Unvexed with anxious cares, and void of strife! <br>Who, studying peace, and shunning civil rage, <br>Enjoyed his youth, and now enjoys his age: <br>All who deserve his love, he makes his own; <br>And, to be loved himself, needs only to be known. <br>Just, good, and wise, contending neighbours come, <br>From your award to wait their final doom; <br>And, foes before, return in friendship home. <br>Without their cost, you terminate the cause, <br>And save the expence of long litigious laws; <br>Where suits are traversed, and so little won, <br>That he who conquers is but last undone: <br>Such are not your decrees; but so designed, <br>The sanction leaves a lasting peace behind; <br>Like your own soul, serene, a pattern of your mind. <br>Promoting concord, and composing strife, <br>Lord of yourself, uncumbered with a wife; <br>Where, for a year, a month, perhaps a night, <br>Long penitence succeeds a short delight: <br>Minds are so hardly matched, that even the first, <br>Though paired by heaven, in Paradise were cursed. <br>For man and woman, though in one they grow, <br>Yet, first or last, return again to two. <br>He to God's image, she to his was made; <br>So, farther from the fount the stream at random strayed. <br>How could he stand, when, put to double pain, <br>He must a weaker than himself sustain! <br>Each might have stood perhaps, but each alone; <br>Two wrestlers help to pull each other down. <br>Not that my verse would blemish all the fair; <br>But yet if some be bad, 'tis wisdom to beware, <br>And better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare. <br>Thus have you shunned, and shun the married state, <br>Trusting as little as you can to fate. <br>No porter guards the passage of your door, <br>To admit the wealthy, and exclude the poor; <br>For God, who gave the riches, gave the heart, <br>To sanctify the whole, by giving part; <br>Heaven, who foresaw the will, the means has wrought, <br>And to the second son a blessing brought; <br>The first-begotten had his father's share; <br>But you, like Jacob, are Rebecca's heir. <br>So may your stores and fruitful fields increase; <br>And ever be you blessed, who live to bless. <br>As Ceres sowed, where-e'er her chariot flew; <br>As heaven in deserts rained the bread of dew; <br>So free to many, to relations most, <br>You feed with manna your own Israel host. <br>With crowds attended of your ancient race, <br>You seek the champaign sports, or sylvan chace; <br>With well-breathed beagles you surround the wood, <br>Even then industrious of the common good; <br>And often have you brought the wily fox <br>To suffer for the firstlings of the flocks; <br>Chased even amid the folds, and made to bleed, <br>Like felons, where they did the murderous deed. <br>This fiery game your active youth maintained; <br>Not yet by years extinguished, though restrained: <br>You season still with sports your serious hours; <br>For age but tastes of pleasures, youth devours. <br>The hare in pastures or in plains is found, <br>Emblem of human life; who runs the round, <br>And, after all his wandering ways are done, <br>His circle fills, and ends where he begun, <br>Just as the setting meets the rising sun. <br>Thus princes ease their cares; but happier he, <br>Who seeks not pleasure through necessity, <br>Than such as once on slippery thrones were placed, <br>And chasing, sigh to think themselves are chased. <br>So lived our sires, ere doctors learned to kill, <br>And multiplied with theirs the weekly bill. <br>The first physicians by debauch were made; <br>Excess began, and sloth sustains the trade. <br>Pity the generous kind their cares bestow <br>To search forbidden truths, (a sin to know,) <br>To which if human science could attain, <br>The doom of death, pronounced by God, were vain. <br>In vain the leech would interpose delay; <br>Fate fastens first, and vindicates the prey. <br>What help from art's endeavours can we have? <br>Guibbons but guesses, nor is sure to save; <br>But Maurus sweeps whole parishes, and peoples every grave; <br>And no more mercy to mankind will use, <br>Than when he robbed and murdered Maro's muse. <br>Would'st thou be soon dispatched, and perish whole, <br>Trust Maurus with thy life, and Milbourne with thy soul. <br>By chase our long-lived fathers earned their food; <br>Toil strung the nerves, and purified the blood: <br>But we their sons, a pampered race of men, <br>Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten. <br>Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, <br>Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. <br>The wise, for cure, on exercise depend; <br>God never made his work for man to mend. <br>The tree of knowledge, once in Eden placed, <br>Was easy found, but was forbid the taste: <br>O had our grandsire walked without his wife, <br>He first had sought the better plant of life! <br>Now both are lost: yet, wandering in the dark, <br>Physicians, for the tree, have found the bark; <br>They, labouring for relief of human kind, <br>With sharpened sight some remedies may find; <br>The apothecary-train is wholly blind. <br>From files a random recipe they take, <br>And many deaths of one prescription make. <br>Garth, generous as his muse, prescribes and gives; <br>The shopman sells, and by destruction lives: <br>Ungrateful tribe! who, like the viper's brood, <br>From Med'cine issuing, suck their mother's blood! <br>Let these obey, and let the learned prescribe, <br>That men may die without a double bribe; <br>Let them, but under their superiors, kill, <br>When doctors first have signed the bloody bill; <br>He 'scapes the best, who, nature to repair, <br>Draws physic from the fields, in draughts of vital air. <br>You hoard not health for your own private use, <br>But on the public spend the rich produce. <br>When, often urged, unwilling to be great, <br>Your country calls you from your loved retreat, <br>And sends to senates, charged with common care, <br>Which none more shuns, and none can better bear: <br>Where could they find another formed so fit, <br>To poise, with solid sense, a sprightly wit? <br>Were these both wanting, as they both abound, <br>Where could so firm integrity be found? <br>Well born, and wealthy, wanting no support, <br>You steer betwixt the country and the court; <br>Nor gratify whate'er the great desire, <br>Nor grudging give, what public needs require. <br>Part must be left, a fund when foes invade, <br>And part employed to roll the watery trade: <br>Even Canaan's happy land, when worn with toil, <br>Required a sabbath-year to mend the meagre soil. <br>Good senators (and such are you) so give, <br>That kings may be supplied, the people thrive: <br>And he, when want requires, is truly wise, <br>Who slights not foreign aids, nor overbuys, <br>But on our native strength, in time of need, relies. <br>Munster was bought, we boast not the success; <br>Who fights for gain, for greater makes his peace. <br>Our foes, compelled by need, have peace embraced; <br>The peace both parties want, is like to last; <br>Which if secure, securely we may trade; <br>Or, not secure, should never have been made. <br>Safe in ourselves, while on ourselves we stand, <br>The sea is ours, and that defends the land. <br>Be, then, the naval stores the nation's care, <br>New ships to build, and battered to repair. <br>Observe the war, in every annual course; <br>What has been done, was done with British force: <br>Namur subdued, is England's palm alone; <br>The rest besieged, but we constrained the town: <br>We saw the event that followed our success; <br>France, though pretending arms, pursued the peace, <br>Obliged, by one sole treaty, to restore <br>What twenty years of war had won before. <br>Enough for Europe has our Albion fought; <br>Let us enjoy the peace our blood has bought. <br>When once the Persian king was put to flight, <br>The weary Macedons refused to fight; <br>Themselves their own mortality confessed, <br>And left the son of Jove to quarrel for the rest. <br>Even victors are by victories undone; <br>Thus Hannibal, with foreign laurels won, <br>To Carthage was recalled, too late to keep his own. <br>While sore of battle, while our wounds are green, <br>Why should we tempt the doubtful die again? <br>In wars renewed, uncertain of success; <br>Sure of a share, as umpires of the peace. <br>A patriot both the king and country serves; <br>Prerogative and privilege preserves: <br>Of each our laws the certain limit show; <br>One must not ebb, nor t'other overflow: <br>Betwixt the prince and parliament we stand, <br>The barriers of the state on either hand; <br>May neither overflow, for then they drown the land. <br>When both are full, they feed our blessed abode; <br>Like those that watered once the Paradise of God. <br>Some overpoise of sway, by turns, they share; <br>In peace the people, and the prince in war; <br>Consuls of moderate power in calms were made; <br>When the Gauls came, one sole dictator swayed. <br>Patriots, in peace, assert the people's right, <br>With noble stubbornness resisting might; <br>No lawless mandates from the court receive, <br>Nor lend by force, but in a body give. <br>Such was your generous grandsire; free to grant <br>In parliaments, that weighed their prince's want: <br>But so tenacious of the common cause, <br>As not to lend the king against his laws; <br>And, in a loathsome dungeon doomed to lie, <br>In bonds retained his birthright liberty, <br>And shamed oppression, till it set him free. <br>O true descendant of a patriot line, <br>Who, while thou shar'st their lustre, lend'st them thine, <br>Vouchsafe this picture of thy soul to see; <br>'Tis so far good, as it resembles thee; <br>The beauties to the original I owe, <br>Which when I miss, my own defects I show <br>Nor think the kindred Muses thy disgrace; <br>A poet is not born in every race. <br>Two of a house few ages can afford, <br>One to perform, another to record. <br>Praiseworthy actions are by thee embraced, <br>And 'tis my praise to make thy praises last. <br>For even when death dissolves our human frame, <br>The soul returns to heaven from whence it came; <br>Earth keeps the body, verse preserves the fame.</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=419886" data-title="To my Honoured Kinsman John Driden, of Chesterton, in the County of Huntingdon, Esq. de John Dryden" data-description="How blessed is he, who leads a country life, 
Unvexed with anxious cares, and void of strife! 
Who, studying peace, and shunning civil rage, 
Enjoyed his youth, and now enjoys his age: 
All who deserve his love, he makes his own; 
And, to be loved..."></div>
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