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If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think it worth enjoying:
Lovely Thaïs sits beside thee,

Take the good the gods provide thee.

The many rend the skies with loud applause;
So love was crowned, but music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,

Gazed on the fair

Who caused his care,

And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again.

At length, with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

6.

Now strike the golden lyre again;

A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.

Break his bands of sleep asunder,

And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark, hark, the horrid sound

Has raised up his head;

As awaked from the dead,

And amazed he stares around.
Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries,
See the Furies arise;

See the snakes that they rear,
How they hiss in their hair,

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!

103, 104. Furies... snakes. The Fu

ries, in Greek mythology, were
divinities whose duty it was to
avenge great enemies. They

were represented as females, with bodies all black, serpents twined in their hair, and blood dripping from their eyes.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-81, 82. worth. What part of speech is this? (See Swinton's New English Grammar, page 134.)

"Winning" and "enjoying "

are infinitives in ing or verbal nouns (ibid. page 52), and are in the objective adverbial (ibid. page 105).

97. rouse him.

Observe in this line that the sound is the echo of the sense. 102. Revenge. Supply the ellipsis.

105

Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,

And unburied remain
Inglorious on the plain :

Give the vengeance due

To the valiant crew.

Behold how they toss their torches on high,

How they point to the Persian abodes,

And glittering temples of their hostile gods.

The princes applaud with a furious joy;

And the king seized a flambeau* with zeal to destroy.
Thaïs led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.

7.

Thus long ago,

Ere heaving bellows learned to blow,

While organs yet were mute,

Timotheus, to his breathing flute

And sounding lyre,

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

113. crew. See L'Allegro, page 51.
116. their hostile gods the gods of
their enemies namely, the Per-
sians.

118. flambeau, a torch.

121. Helen, the wife of Menelaus, King

of Sparta, was the most beauti-
ful woman in the world, and,
according to Grecian mytholo-
gy, was reputed of divine origin.
She was abducted by Paris,
Prince of Troy. Hence the

Trojan war, which lasted ten
years, ending with the taking
and burning of the city by the
Greeks. Now, as Helen was
the occasion of the Trojan war,
she is represented as the cause
of the burning of Troy, and
hence the parallel drawn by
Dryden between her and Thaïs
(see note 9).

123. bellows: that is, of the organ.
125. to, with.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-108. torch.

What is the syntax of this word. 109. Those are... slain. State the real meaning of this sentence.

110

115

120

125

At last divine Cecilia came,

Inventress* of the vocal frame;

The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,

Enlarged the former narrow bounds,

And added length to solemn sounds,

With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown:
He raised a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.

129. Inventress of the vocal frame: that is, the organ. The legend of St. Cecilia is obscure. She is reputed to have lived in the third century A.D., and is credited with the invention of the organ.

136. He raised a mortal, etc.: that is, immortalized Alexander.

137. drew an angel down. In the story

of St. Cecilia, told in the "Golden Legends" (Legenda Aurea, thirteenth century), she is said to have been under the immediate and present protection of an angel; and this was probably the beginning of the tradition here referred to, and which was exquisitely painted by Raphael.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.—129. What is the etymology of "Inventress ?" 134-137. Give a paraphrase of the last four lines.

130

135

II. TWO PORTRAITS IN AQUA-FORTIS.

[INTRODUCTION.-These two extracts are from Dryden's political satire called Absalom and Achitophel, which contains over one thousand lines, and was first published in 1681. By Achitophel is meant the Earl of Shaftesbury, the great leader of the Protestant opposition during the latter years of the reign of Charles II. Dryden had before then become a convert to Catholicity, and his object was to throw odium on Shaftesbury and his party. The brilliant, profligate Duke of Buckingham (Zimri) was a statesman and a writer, and at this time was, with Shaftesbury, a leader of the opposition. Many other personages are represented in the poem of Absalom and Achitophel; but these two are the most famous portraits.]

I-ACHITOPHEL (THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY).

Of these the false Achitophel was first,
A name to all succeeding ages curst :
For close designs and crooked councils fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace-
A fiery soul which, working out its way,
Fretted the pygmy* body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity,

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.*

NOTES. Line 3. close designs, secret

plots.

6. In power.

4. turbulent of wit = a turbulent spirit. Shaftesbury had been Lord-chancellor.-disgrace: he was at this time in the Tower awaiting trial on a charge of

quitted a short time after the first publication of Dryden's poem.

8. pygmy body. Shaftesbury was very small in stature.

9. o'er-informed, over-filled, over-animated.

high-treason, of which crime he 13. to show his wit, in order to show was, however, triumphantly ac

his skill.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-1-9. Express briefly in your own language the quali ties ascribed to Achitophel in the first nine lines.

10. A daring pilot. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 20.) Show how the metaphor is carried out in the subsequent lines.

13. to show (= in order to show), adverbial element: what does it modify?

5

10

Great wits * are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else why should he, with wealth and honors blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please,
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?

And all to leave what with his toil he won

To that unfeathered, two-legged thing, a son.—
In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.

To compass this the triple bond he broke,
The pillars of the public safety shook,

And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke:

Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name;

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So easy still it proves, in factious times,
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.

How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,

Where none can sin against the people's will;
Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own!

14. Great wits, great intellect.

17. his age: that is, his old age.

pointless line, the only one in the piece.

19. Bankrupt of life, etc.: that is, "why 24. the triple bond. The alliance of

should he, with a ruined consti-
tution, prodigally sacrifice his
ease."

21. unfeathered, two-legged thing. Plato
humorously defined man as "a
biped without feathers." Dry- 26.
den appropriates it for the pur-

England, Holland, and Sweden against France (1667). Shaftesbury was in no way responsible for its "breaking," and the line is a slander.

foreign yoke. The alliance in 1670 with France.

pose of ribaldry, and makes a 28. all-atoning, all-reconciling.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-17. age... hours. Syntax of these words?

23. Resolved. Supply the ellipsis. "To ruin or to rule," would this in prose be the best order of the antithesis?

25, 26. What two examples of metaphor in these lines?

31-34. What kind of sentence is the last?

15

20

25

30

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