Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)
Considered one of the greatest English poets of the eighteenth century.
Thou Great First Cause, least understood
Who all my sense confined
To know but this, that Thou art good
And that myself am blind.
What dire offence from amorous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things!
Ignobly vain, and impotently great.
The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole
Can never be a mouse of any soul.
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
The sick in body call for aid: the sick
In mind are covetous of more disease;
And when at worst, they dream themselves quite well.
To know ourselves diseased, is half our cure.
Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister spirit, come away!
A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.
Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
From old Belerium to the northern main.
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O grave! where is thy victory?
O death! where is thy sting?
He who tells a lie, is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.
How vast a memory has Love!
Good God! how often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? in every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part.
It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow necked bottles: the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.
Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn,
And liquid amber drop from every thorn.
On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates.
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned.
There various news I heard of love and strife,
Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,
Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,
Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,
Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,
Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,
Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,
The fall of favourites, projects of the great,
Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:
All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.