Laurels While You Wait

The reissue of Critic Mark Van Doren's prosaic, reasonable book about Poet John Dryden* provoked the New York Post's Reviewer Sterling North, who has been similarly provoked before, to a brisk whirl of Drydenesque heroic couplets. In 32 rough (but sometimes very ready) didactic verses, he reproduced a spat between "Seraph Pro" and "Archangel Con," before a Heavenly Critics' jury for the Book of the Aeon Club.

Best lines:

CON : (Preening a ruffled wing)

With halting feet poor Dryden's verses

march

With fallen arches through each fallen

arch. . . .

He fashioned ivy for each reigning

pate--

Bay Leaves for Sale, and Laurels While

You Wait. . . .

PRO: Admit that Dryden's Virgil was

supreme,

With classic grace enmeshing classic

dream!

CON: (Extracting a new quill from Pro's wing)

Alas, Ulysses then was doubly lost

When Homer's lyre was plucked by

Virgil's ghost.

Where Wit and Judgment live as Celibate

Nor Fancy sleeps with Reason as her

mate

The dualistic Dryden and his muse

Shake hands, but lack the fiery heat to

fuse.

PANEL OF CRITICS:

Enough, enough; the evidence is in;

His gold was silver, never gilded tin.

He named an age and set a style (or

pose)

In couplets, in blank verse, in measured

prose;

Loved Men and Books, spoke from an

Eager Heart;

Produced some lines less Artifice than

Art;

Placed stoic heroes on a static page

But brought to flower a ripe Augustan

Age.

Leave him some fame, his cool Westminster nook--

We find for Dryden and Van Doren's

book.

Critic North appends the postscript:

Book of the Aeon judges (please take

note)

Have chosen Dryden--one dissenting vote.

* John Dryden: A Study of His Poetry; Holt ($3).

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