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Which poem first marked John Dryden as a poet worth watching in 1659?
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John Dryden
John Dryden, oil painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1693; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
In 1659, John Dryden contributed "heroic stanzas" to a memorial volume for Oliver Cromwell, which marked him as a poet worth watching. These stanzas were noted for being mature, sonorous, and filled with the classical and scientific allusions that would later characterize his verse.1