Although the most do with officious heat Only adore the living and the great, Yet this Queen's merits Fame so far hath spread, That she rules still, though dispossest and dead. For losing one, two other Crowns remained; Over all hearts and her own griefs she reigned. Two Thrones so splendid as to none are less But to that third which she does now possess. Her heart and birth Fortune as well did know, That seeking her own fame in such a foe, She drest the spacious theatre for the fight: And the admiring World call'd to the sight: An army then of mighty sorrows brought, Who all against this single virtue fought; And sometimes stratagems, and sometimes blows, To her heroic soul they did oppose: But at her feet their vain attempts did fall, And she discovered and subdu'd them all. Cowley in his long 'heroic' poem _The Davideis_ admits the occasional Alexandrine or twelve-syllable line as a variation on the monotony of the rhythm. Dryden, with his incomparably sounder and stronger literary sense, saw the need for a richer variation yet, and obtained it by the free use both of triple rimes and of Alexandrines: often getting fine effects of sweeping sonority, although by means which the reader cannot but feel to be arbitrary, imported into the form because its monotony calls for relief rather than intrinsic and natural to it. Chaucer's prayer, above quoted, of Emilia to Diana runs thus in Dryden's 'translation':-- O Goddess, Haunter of the Woodland Green, To whom both Heav'n and Earth and Seas are seen; Queen of the nether Skies, where half the Year Thy Silver Beams descend, and light the gloomy Sphere; Goddess of Maids, and conscious of our Hearts, So keep me from the Vengeance of thy Darts, Which Niobe's devoted Issue felt, When hissing through the Skies the feather'd Deaths were dealt: As I desire to live a Virgin-life, Nor know the Name of Mother or of Wife. Thy Votress from my tender Years I am, And love, like thee, the Woods and Sylvan Game. Like Death, thou know'st, I loath the Nuptial State, And Man, the Tyrant of our Sex, I hate, A lowly Servant, but a lofty Mate. Where Love is Duty on the Female Side, On theirs mere sensual Gust, and sought with surly Pride. Now by thy triple Shape, as thou art seen In Heav'n, Earth, Hell, and ev'ry where a Queen, Grant this my first Desire; let Discord, cease, And make betwixt the Rivals lasting Peace: Quench their hot Fire, or far from me remove The Flame, and turn it on some other Love. Or if my frowning Stars have so decreed, That one must be rejected, one succeed, Make him my Lord, within whose faithful Breast Is fix'd my Image, and who loves me best. In serious work Dryden avoided double endings almost entirely, reserving them for playful and colloquial use in stage prologues, epilogues, and the like, thus:--