The Hind and the Panther

Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.

The Hind and the Panther: A Poem, in Three Parts is an allegory in heroic couplets by John Dryden, published in 1687. At some 2600 lines it is much the longest of Dryden's poems, translations excepted, and perhaps the most controversial.

Quotes

Part I

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.
- l. 1

And doomed to death, though fated not to die.
- l. 8

For truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be loved needs only to be seen.
- l. 33
  Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle II, l. 217: "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, / As to be hated needs but to be seen."

My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires;
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,
Followed false lights; and, when their glimpse was gone,
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
Such was I, such by nature still I am;
Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame!
Good life be now my task; my doubts are done;
What more could fright my faith, than Three in One?
- l. 72

For you may palm upon us new for old;
All, as they say, that glitters, is not gold.
- l. 214
  "All that glitters is not gold." Cf. Alain de Lille

Of all the tyrannies on human-kind,
The worst is that which persecutes the mind.
- l. 239

Reason to rule, but mercy to forgive;
The first is law, the last prerogative.
- l. 261

And kind as kings upon their coronation day.
- l. 271

Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell.
- l. 343

As long as words a different sense will bear,
And each may be his own interpreter,
Our airy faith will no foundation find,
The word's a weathercock for every wind.
- l. 462

And leaves the private conscience for the guide.
- l. 478

Eternal house, not built with mortal hands!
- l. 494

Part II

Who can believe what varies every day,
Nor ever was, nor will be at a stay?
- l. 36

All have not the gift of martyrdom.
- l. 59

That men may err was never yet denied.
- l. 61
  Pope, Essay on Criticism, Pt. II, l. 325: "To err is human."

When the cause goes hard, the guilty man
Excepts, and thins his jury all he can.
- l. 242

Either be wholly slaves, or wholly free.
- l. 285

War seldom enters but where wealth allures.
- l. 706

Part III

Much malice, mingled with a little wit,
Perhaps may censure this mysterious writ.
- l. 1

Jealousy, the jaundice of the soul.
- l. 73

For present joys are more to flesh and blood,
Than a dull prospect of a distant good.
- l. 364

By education most have been misled;
So they believe, because they so were bred.
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.
- l. 389

Let the guiltless person throw the stone.
- l. 684
  John, ch. 8, v. 7: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

To abhor the makers, and their laws approve,
Is to hate traitors, and the treason love.
- l. 706

Secret guilt by silence is betrayed.
- l. 763

Possess your soul with patience.
- l. 839

That desperate cures must be to desperate ills applied.
- l. 1112
  Hippocrates, Aphorism I: "Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases."

For those whom God to ruin has designed,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.
- l. 2387
  "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

External links

Walter Scott (ed.) The Works of John Dryden (1808), vol. 10