King Arthur - Kostenloses Hörbuch

TO MR DRYDEN ON HIS CLEOMENES.

Has youth then lost its great prerogative?

And does the soul alone for age survive?

Like embryos sleeping in their seeds, seem nought,

'Till friendly time does ripen it to thought?

Judgment, experience, that before was theirs:

But fancy wantons still in younger spheres;

Played with some loose and scattered beams of light,

And revelled in an anarchy of wit.

Both youth and age unequally did charm;

As much too cold was this, as that too warm.

But you have reconciled their differing praise,

By fixing both to your immortal bays;

Where Fancy mounts, but Judgment holds the reins,

Not checks, but guides you to harmonious strains.

'Tis harmony indeed, 'tis all unite,

Like finished nature, and divided light:

}

{  Like the vast order, and its numerous throng,

{  Crowded to their Almighty Maker's song;

{  Where heaven and earth seem but one single tongue.

O wond'rous man! where have you learned the art,

To charm our reason, while you wound the heart?

Far more than Spartan morals to inspire,

While your great accents kindle Spartan fire?

Thus metals, heated to the artist's will,

Receive the impression of a nobler skill.

Your hero formed so regularly good,

So nicely patient in his want of food,

That it no more th' undress of death appears,

While the rich garment of your sense it wears,

So just a husband, father, son, and friend,

Great in his life, but greater in his end;

}

{  That sure, like Xenophon, you meant to shew

{  Not what they are, but what they ought to do;

{  At once a poet, and instructor too.

}

{  The parts so managed, as if each were thine;

{  Thou draw'st both ore and metal from the mine;

{  And, to be seen, thou mak'st even vice to shine:

As if, like Siam's transmigrating god,

A single life in each you made abode;

And the whole business of the tedious round,

To copy patterns which in each you found.

Sure you have gained from heaven Promethean fire,

To form, then kindle souls into desire:

Else why successive starts of hopes and fears,

A martial warmth first raised, then quenched with tears?

Unless this truth shines clearly through the whole,

Sense rules the world, but you command the soul.

Theophilus Parsons.