Summary
Dryden, addressing a listener (presumably Mr. Oldham himself), says farewell. He describes Oldham as insufficiently recognized, though Dryden himself feels a certain kinship or possessiveness over him. Their souls are similar, he thinks—both have a bent towards poetry. Though they play different instruments, so to speak, they play the same note. They are similarly impatient with fools, and they both had the same goals in their studies. Dryden then discusses the cruelly short span of Oldham's career. He compares his friend to Nisus, a mythological character who slips and loses a race, allowing his young friend Euryalus to win instead. Dryden asks what gifts old age could possibly bring for someone who has always been talented.
Analysis
Written in 1684, this poem pays tribute to the work and life of John Oldham, a poet beloved by Dryden who had recently died at only age thirty. Though Dryden was not literally older than Oldham, he describes his fellow poet as a kind of mentor, and casts his death as a tragic turn both allowing and requiring Dryden to step into his shoes. The allusion Dryden uses to describe this dynamic, drawn from Vergil's Aeneid, is a curious one. In that story, the older soldier Nisus finds himself winning a race against his beloved Euryalus. He slips and loses his own lead, but in order to make sure that Euryalus can win, he trips another competitor, allowing Euryalus to triumph. By referencing these characters' love, Dryden suggests a relationship of deep devotion between himself and Oldham. He doesn't go so far as to hint that Oldham has died to make way for his own poetic career, but he suggests that, in the manner of Euryalus and Nisus, the two are allied, so that Dryden's own success is a result of and a tribute to Oldham's work. Moreover, the reference to this story, with its tinge of physical comedy, is a reminder of the precise nature of Dryden's admiration. He loves Oldham's work because Oldham is a satirist like himself, gifted at comic depictions of contemporary people and issues. The reference to a story that contains moments of both touching devotion and slapstick comedy offers insight into how Dryden sees his relationship to the other poet.
Like much of Dryden's work (and that of other satirists in this period), this poem is written in heroic couplets. Heroic couplets are rhyming two-line sequences written in iambic pentameter. This meter, composed of ten syllables with the stress falling on every second syllable, is the most common poetic meter in English. In Dryden's longer works it creates a conversational, readable tone. In this shorter poem, it offers a balance between patterned predictability and intimate nonchalance. Meanwhile, even as Dryden describes grief and death, reflecting on events outside of human control, the tight patterning of heroic couplets creates a feeling of stately control. Though Dryden is describing sorrow, emotion never overtakes the poem. Instead, the steady relentlessness of the AABBCC rhyme scheme gives us a sense of our speaker's almost professional, authoritative artistry.
