JOHN DRYDEN
Ah, generous youth! that wish forbear, The winds too soon will waft thee here! Slack all thy sails, and fear to come, Alas, thou know'st not, thou art wreck'd at home! No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face, Thou hast already had her last embrace. But look aloft, and if thou kenn'bt from far, Among the Pleiads a new kindl'd star, If any sparkles than the rest more bright, 'Tis she that shines in that propitious light.
When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground, When, in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, The judging God shall close the book of Fate, And there the last assizes keep For those who wake and those who sleep; When rattling bones together fly From the four corners of the sky; When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread, Those cloth'd with flesh, and life inspires the dead; The sacred Poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound, For they are cover'd with the lightest ground; And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing, Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet Saint, before the quire shalt go, As harbinger of Heaven, the way to show, The way which thou so well hast learn'd below.
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