Epigram on Milton
John Dryden
Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty, in both the last:
The force of Nature could no father go;
To make a third, she joined the former two.
I love this one. Dryden in six lines extolled Milton as the greatest
epic poet ever in history; with casualness but ultmost command of the
elements of poetry, Dryden has embedded his paramount reverence in
the ever-expanding imagery of John Milton, and thereby, unintentionally,
winning reverence for himself. Allow me to define this poem as a quadruple
cannonization--Homer, Vigil, Milton, and Dryden himself.
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