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Merit challenges envy.

John Dryden

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join’d the former two.
JOHN DRYDEN

Age Distant Force Herself Nature Poet
Content with poverty, my soul I arm; And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
JOHN DRYDEN

Myself Poverty Soul Virtue Warm
Murder may pass unpunished for a time, But tardy justice will overtake the crime.
JOHN DRYDEN

Crime Murder Punishment Time
When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
JOHN DRYDEN

Cheating Favor Fools Hope Life
Luxurious kings are to their people lost, They live like drones, upon the public cost.
JOHN DRYDEN

Live Lost Luxury People Public
But when to sin our biased nature leans, The careful Devil is still at hand with means; And providently pimps for ill desires.
JOHN DRYDEN

Desire Hands Nature Sick Sin
Among our crimes oblivion may be set.
JOHN DRYDEN

Crime Oblivion
A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.
JOHN DRYDEN

Cheating Man Passion Reason Truth
Men’s virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes.
JOHN DRYDEN

Crime Freedom Tax Virtue
Fowls, by winter forced, forsake the floods, and wing their hasty flight to happier lands.
JOHN DRYDEN

Force Happiness Land Winter
Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense, But good men starve for want of impudence.
JOHN DRYDEN

Bold Goodness Starve
Love and Time with reverence use, Treat them like a parting friend: Nor the golden gifts refuse Which in youth sincere they send: For each year their price is more, And they less simple than before.
JOHN DRYDEN

Friendship Love Price Time Treat
War seldom enters but where wealth allures.
JOHN DRYDEN

Seldom War Wealth
But how can finite grasp Infinity?
JOHN DRYDEN

Finite Grasp Infinity
Freedom which in no other land will thrive, Freedom an English subject’s sole prerogative.
JOHN DRYDEN

Freedom Subject Thrive
Sculptors are obliged to follow the manners of the painters, and to make many ample folds, which are unsufferable hardness, and more like a rock than a natural garment.
JOHN DRYDEN

Follow Natural Obligation Paint Rock Sculptor

Merit challenges envy.

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Merit challenges envy.

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