Analysis of To Mr. Dryden
Joseph Addison 1672 (Milston) – 1719 (Holland House, London)
How long, great Poet, shall thy sacred lays
Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise?
Can eneither injuries of time, or age,
Damp thy poetic heat, and quench thy rage?
No so thy Ovid in his exile wrote,
Grief chill'd his breast,and check'd his rising thought:
Pensive and sad, his drooping Muse betrays
The Roman genius in its last decays.
Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possest,
And second youth is kindled in thy breast;
Thou mak'st the beauties of the Romans known,
And England boasts of riches not her own;
Thy lines have heighten'd Virgil's majesty,
And Horace wonders at himself in thee.
Thou teachest Persius to inform our isle
In smoother numbers, and a clearer style;
And Juvenal, instructed in thy page,
Edges his satire, and improves his rage,
Thy copy casts a fairer light on all,
And still out-shines, the bright original.
Now Ovid boasts th' advanage of thy song,
And tells his story in the British tongue;
Thy charming verse, and fair translations, show
How thy own laurel first began to grow:
How wild Lycaon, chang'd by angry gods,
And frighted at himself, ran howling through the woods.
O may'st thou still the noble talk prolong,
Nor age, nor sickness, interrupt thy song:
Then may we wondering read, how human limbs
Have water'd kingdoms, and dissolv'd in streams;
Of those rich fruits that on the fertile mold
Turn'd yellow by degrees, and ripen'd into gold:
How some in feathers, or a ragged hide,
Have liv'd a second life, and different natures try'd.
Then will thy Ovid, thus transform'd, reveal
A nobler change than he himself can tell.
Scheme | AABBCDAACEFFGGHHBBIJKLMMNOKKPQRRSCTU |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111011101 011010001101 111001111 1101010111 11110111 111111101 1001110101 0101001101 010111111 0101110011 11101010101 0101110101 111101100 0101010101 111101101 0101000101 01010011 1011000111 1101010111 0111010100 111111111 0111000101 1101010101 1111010111 11111101 01101110101 11111010101 111100111 11110011101 1101000101 1111110101 110101010011 1101010101 1101010100101 111110101 0101110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,548 |
Words | 274 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 36 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,232 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 271 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:26 min read
- 60 Views
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"To Mr. Dryden" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 9 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/24505/to-mr.-dryden>.
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