Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 294 pages of information about Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham.

Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 294 pages of information about Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham.
And on the secret seat the king she placed. 
Meanwhile Polites, one of Priam’s sons,
Flying the rage of bloody Pyrrhus, runs
Through foes and swords, and ranges all the court 520
And empty galleries, amazed and hurt;
Pyrrhus pursues him, now o’ertakes, now kills,
And his last blood in Priam’s presence spills. 
The king (though him so many deaths enclose)
Nor fear, nor grief, but indignation shows;
’The gods requite thee (if within the care
Of those above th’affairs of mortals are),
Whose fury on the son but lost had been,
Had not his parents’ eyes his murder seen: 
Not that Achilles (whom thou feign’st to be 530
Thy father) so inhuman was to me;
He blush’d, when I the rights of arms implored;
To me my Hector, me to Troy, restored.’ 
This said, his feeble arm a jav’lin flung,
Which on the sounding shield, scarce ent’ring, rung. 
Then Pyrrhus; ’Go a messenger to hell
Of my black deeds, and to my father tell
The acts of his degen’rate race.’  So through
His son’s warm blood the trembling king he drew
To th’altar; in his hair one hand he wreathes; 540
His sword the other in his bosom sheaths. 
Thus fell the king, who yet surviv’d the state,
With such a signal and peculiar fate,
Under so vast a ruin, not a grave,
Nor in such flames a fun’ral fire to have: 
He whom such titles swell’d, such power made proud,
To whom the sceptres of all Asia bow’d,
On the cold earth lies th’unregarded king,
A headless carcase, and a nameless thing.

[1] ‘Gave them gone’:  i.e., gave them up for gone.

ON THE EARL OF STRAFFORD’S TRIAL AND DEATH.

Great Strafford! worthy of that name, though all
Of thee could be forgotten, but thy fall,
Crush’d by imaginary treason’s weight,
Which too much merit did accumulate. 
As chemists gold from brass by fire would draw,
Pretexts are into treason forged by law. 
His wisdom such, at once it did appear
Three kingdoms’ wonder, and three kingdoms’ fear;
Whilst single he stood forth, and seem’d, although
Each had an army, as an equal foe. 10
Such was his force of eloquence, to make
The hearers more concern’d than he that spake;
Each seem’d to act that part he came to see,
And none was more a looker-on than he;
So did he move our passions, some were known
To wish, for the defence, the crime their own. 
Now private pity strove with public hate,
Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate: 
Now they could him, if he could them, forgive;
He’s not too guilty, but too wise, to live:  20
Less seem those facts which treason’s nickname bore,
Than such a fear’d ability for more. 
They after death their fears of him express,

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Project Gutenberg
Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.