ANNUS MIRABILIS: THE YEAR OF WONDERS, 1666. AN HISTORICAL POEM AN ESSAY UPON SATIRE. BY MR DRYDEN AND THE EARL OF MULGRAVE, 1679 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL THE MEDAL. A SATIRE AGAINST SEDITION RELIGIO LAICI; OR, A LAYMAN'S FAITH. AN EPISTLE THRENODIA AUGUSTALIS: A FUNERAL PINDARIC POEM, SACRED TO THE HAPPY MEMORY OF KING CHARLES II VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS, PARAPHRASED THE HIND AND THE PANTHER. A POEM, IN THREE PARTS MAC FLECKNOE BRITANNIA REDIVIVA. A POEM ON THE PRINCE, BORN JUNE 10, 1688 DRYDEN'S POEMS. ON THE DEATH OF LORD HASTINGS.[1] Must noble Hastings immaturely die, The honour of his ancient family; Beauty and learning thus together meet, To bring a winding for a wedding-sheet? Must Virtue prove Death's harbinger? must she, With him expiring, feel mortality? Is death, Sin's wages, Grace's now? shall Art Make us more learned, only to depart? If merit be disease; if virtue death; To be good, not to be; who'd then bequeath 10 Himself to discipline? who'd not esteem Labour a crime? study, self-murder deem? Our noble youth now have pretence to be Dunces securely, ignorant healthfully. Rare linguist, whose worth speaks itself, whose praise, Though not his own, all tongues besides do raise: Than whom great Alexander may seem less, Who conquer'd men, but not their languages. In his mouth nations spake; his tongue might be Interpreter to Greece, France, Italy. 20 His native soil was the four parts o' the Earth; All Europe was too narrow for his birth. A young apostle; and, with reverence may I speak it, inspired with gift of tongues, as they. Nature gave him, a child, what men in vain Oft strive, by art though further'd, to obtain. His body was an orb, his sublime soul Did move on Virtue's and on Learning's pole: Whose regular motions better to our view, Than Archimedes[2] sphere, the Heavens did show. 30 Graces and virtues, languages and arts, Beauty and learning, fill'd up all the parts. Heaven's gifts, which do like falling stars appear Scatter'd in others; all, as in their sphere, Were fix'd, conglobate in his soul; and thence Shone through his body, with sweet influence; Letting their glories so on each limb fall, The whole frame render'd was celestial. Come, learned Ptolemy[3] and trial make, If thou this hero's altitude canst take: 40 But that transcends thy skill; thrice happy all, Could we but prove thus astronomical. Lived Tycho[4] now, struck with this ray which shone More bright i' the morn, than others' beam at noon. He'd take his astrolabe, and seek out here What new star 'twas did gild our hemisphere. Replenish'd then with such rare gifts as these, Where was room left for such a foul disease? The nation's sin hath drawn that veil, which shrouds