Discovering poetry: John Dryden, Jacobite superstar

From Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid

Arms and the man I sing who forced by fate
And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate
Expelled and exiled left the Trojan shore.
Long labours both by sea and land he bore
And in the doubtful war; before he won
The Latian realm and built the destined town,
His banished Gods restored to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line:
From whence the race of Alban Fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
    O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate,
What goddess was provoked, and whence her hate,
For what offence the Queen of Heaven began
To persecute so brave, so just a man!
Involved his anxious life in endless cares,
Exposed to wants, and hurried into wars!
Can Heavenly minds such high resentment show;
Or exercise their spite in human woe?

Dryden always wanted to write an epic. ‘A heroic poem’, he wrote, ‘is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform’.