Home > Poems & Poets > A Song from the Italian from Limberham: or, the Kind Keeper

POEM
RELATED CONTENT Discover this poem's context and related poetry.

A Song from the Italian from Limberham: or, the Kind Keeper

By John Dryden 1631–1700 John Dryden

By a dismal cypress lying,

Damon cried, all pale and dying,

Kind is death that ends my pain,

But cruel she I lov'd in vain.

The mossy fountains

Murmur my trouble,

And hollow mountains

My groans redouble:

Ev'ry nymph mourns me,

Thus while I languish;

She only scorns me,

Who caus'd my anguish.

No love returning me, but all hope denying;

By a dismal cypress lying,

Like a swan, so sung he dying:

Kind is death that ends my pain,

But cruel she I lov'd in vain.

Biography

After John Donne and John Milton, John Dryden was the greatest English poet of the seventeenth century. After William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, he was the greatest playwright. And he has no peer as a writer of prose, especially literary criticism, and as a translator. Other figures, such as George Herbert or Andrew Marvell or William Wycherley or William Congreve, may figure more prominently in anthologies and literary . . .

Continue reading this biography