Dryden Agonistes part II

“Who are we having then?” asked James’s daughter,
Asperity hawking all round her tone,
No mellowed from forgetting.

“Marlborough.”
“Not for that!”

…Darnby was looking very tired, so
Halifax – with the olden weather eye
For what was going on – stepped into place,

“You are inclining to the poetic,
Your Majesty?”

“I’m speaking the King’s –
My own, come to that, by Parliament –
The Queen’s own English.”

“And the King’s”, snapped William, stopping feigning,
“And Mr. Dryden’s, too” – that shut them up –
“Some say.”

“His contribution is scarcely in doubt,”
Halifax trimmed.

“Ve must develop it. I haf some taste.”

He liked to make them quite as quiet as
The paladin who founded Orangedom.

“You too, my darlink? You are staring zo? Vell
You must know I read and read a lot
And I haf tastes and I vont that man who
Allifax said before.”

“Rochester, sire, has been sometime dead…”

“Don’t patronise a Prinz King utero! I know all zat.
You zed ‘im: Shadwell.”

“No!”

Too much startlement’s hell for good address.

“I like him.” “But I never said him.” “Well.”

Halifax picks over his tact’s Fontenoy,
Spoils the bodies of prevarications,
Thinks of Prince William, his dykes, cochlea, cannon,
He knows now what went wrong,
“No, no, sire, ‘had well’…’
“Vell Shadwell I like.”

William of Orange, who has read Vegetius,
Machiavelli, and not Mac Flecknoe,
He thinks to summation: “Shadwell is humorous.”