John Dryden (1631-1700). Lines Printed under the Engraved Portrait of Milton. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1910. The Book of Restoration Verse

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910.

Lines Printed under the Engraved Portrait of Milton

By John Dryden (1631–1700)

In Tonson’s Folio Edition of the ‘Paradise Lost’

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 farther go;	5
To make a third she joined the former two.