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On A Picture Of Seneca Dying In A Bath, By Jordain

By Matthew Prior

Topics: classic

While cruel Nero only drains The moral Spaniard's ebbing veins, By study worn, and slack with age, How dull, how thoughtless is his rage! Heighten'd revenge he should have took, He should have burnt his tutor's book; And long have reign's supreme in vice; One noble wretch can only rise; 'Tis he whose fury shall deface The Stoic's Image in this piece, For, while unhurt, divine Jordain, Thy work and Seneca's remain, He still has body, still has soul, And lives and speaks restored and whole.

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Author:Matthew Prior

"While cruel Nero only drains..." by Matthew Prior

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Matthew Prior

About Matthew Prior

Matthew Prior (1664–1721) was an English poet and diplomat. His poem "Alma: or, The Progress of the Mind" and his epitaph "Nobles and heralds, by your leave" are witty Augustan verse.

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