Why should a foolish marriage vow

John Dryden

1631 –

1700

Why should a foolish marriage vow, 
  Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now
  When passion is decay'd?
We loved, and we loved, as long as we could,
  Till our love was loved out in us both:
But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
  'Twas pleasure first made it an oath.

If I have pleasures for a friend,
  And farther love in store,
What wrong has he whose joys did end,
  And who could give no more?
'Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me,
Or that I should bar him of another:
For all we can gain is to give our selves pain,
When neither can hinder the other.

This poem is in the public domain.

Alexander’s Feast; or, the Power of Music

A song in honour of St. Cecilia’s day, 1697.

‘Twas at the royal feast for Persia won   
        By Philip’s warlike son—   
    Aloft in awful state   
    The godlike hero sate   
        On his imperial throne; 
  His valiant peers were placed around,   
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound   
  (So should desert in arms be crown’d);   
The lovely Thais by his side   
Sate like a blooming Eastern bride 
In flower of youth and beauty’s pride:—   
   Happy, happy, happy pair!

John Dryden

1697

Astraea Redux

A Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of His Second Majesty Charles II., 1660.

Now with a general peace the world was blest,
While ours, a world divided from the rest,
A dreadful quiet felt, and worser far
Than arms, a sullen interval of war:
Thus when black clouds draw down the labouring skies,
Ere yet abroad the winged thunder flies,
An horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we the tempest fear.
The ambitious Swede, like restless billows tost,
On this hand gaining what on that he lost,
Though in his life he blood and ruin breathed,
To his now guideles

John Dryden

1660

Aureng-Zebe, Prologue

Our author, by experience, finds it true,
'Tis much more hard to please himself than you;
And out of no feign'd modesty, this day
Damns his laborious trifle of a play;
Not that it's worse than what before he writ,
But he has now another taste of wit;
And, to confess a truth, though out of time,
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme.
Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And nature flies him like enchanted ground:
What verse can do, he has perform'd in this,
Which he presumes the most correct of his;
But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his breast at Shakspea

John Dryden

1675

Poems

Why should a foolish marriage vow

More by this poet

Alexander’s Feast; or, the Power of Music

Astraea Redux

Aureng-Zebe, Prologue

Poems

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Why should a foolish marriage vow

More by this poet

Alexander’s Feast; or, the Power of Music

Astraea Redux

Aureng-Zebe, Prologue

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