Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)
Considered one of the greatest English poets of the eighteenth century.
Dear, damned, distracting town, farewell!
Thy fools no more I'll tease:
This year in peace, ye critics, dwell,
Ye harlots, sleep at ease!
Therefore they who say our thoughts are not our own because they resemble the Ancients, may as well say our faces are not our own, because they are like our Fathers: And indeed it is very unreasonable, that people should expect us to be Scholars, and yet be angry to find us so.
Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade:
Where'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.
I find myself just in the same situation of mind you describe as your own, heartily wishing the good, that is the quiet of my country, and hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show.
Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake,
And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake.
Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet, and they died.
In vain they schem'd, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.
Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.
Say, is not absence death to those who love?
The verses, when they were written, resemble nothing so much as spoonfuls of boiling oil, ladled out by a fiendish money at an upstairs window upon such passers-by whom the wretch had a grudge against.
Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water seem to strive again,
Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised,
But, as the world, harmoniously confused:
Where order in variety we see,
And where, though all things differ, all agree.
Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man.
I would not be like those Authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole Poem, and vice versa a whole Poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.
But when mischief mortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
Unblemish'd let me live, or die unknown;
O grant an honest fame, or grant me none!
Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law,
Or some frail China jar receive a flaw,
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade,
Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade.