Read the excerpts from John Dryden's poem Annus Mirabilis. Which lines refer to the great fire that swept through the city of Lo
ndon in 1666? Yet like an English general will I die, And all the ocean make my spacious grave: Women and cowards on the land may lie; The sea's a tomb that's proper for the brave. Restless he pass'd the remnant of the night, Till the fresh air proclaimed the morning nigh: And burning ships, the martyrs of the fight, With paler fires beheld the eastern sky. ... Her flag aloft spread ruffling to the wind, And sanguine streamers seem the flood to fire; The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd, Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire. With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves; Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length, She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves. ... The distance judged for shot of every size, The linstocks touch, the ponderous ball expires: The vigorous seaman every port-hole plies, And adds his heart to every gun he fires! . . . But ah! how insincere are all our joys! Which, sent from heaven, like lightning make no stay; Their palling taste the journey's length destroys, Or grief, sent post, o'ertakes them on the way. . . . Now down the narrow streets it swiftly came, And widely opening did on both sides prey: This benefit we sadly owe the flame, If only ruin must enlarge our way.
