Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

A Switz, a High-Dutch, or a Low-Dutch bear; All that we ask is but a patient ear. ’Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor: And the ...

With praise or infamy leave that to fate; Get place and wealth—if possible with grace; If not, by any means get wealth and place ...

Slopes at its foot, the woods its sides embrace, The silver Thames reflects its marble face. Now let some whimsy, or that devil ...

Great without title, without fortune blessed; Rich, even when plundered, honoured while oppressed; Loved without youth, and foll ...

Shall glitter o’er the pendant green, Where Thames reflects the visionary scene: Thither the silver-sounding lyres Shall call th ...

particular; the governors of it, and the four cardinal virtues. Then the poem hastes into the midst of things, presenting her on ...

Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monro would take her down, 20 Where o’er the gates, by hi ...

Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance! How tragedy and comedy embrace; How farce and epic get a jumbled race; 60 How time h ...

In pleasing memory of all he stole, How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug, And sucked all o’er, like an industrious bu ...

Stole from the master of the seven-fold face; And thrice he lifted high the birthday brand, And thrice he dropt it from his quiv ...

Fatten the courtier, starve the learned band, And suckle armies, and dry-nurse the land: Till senates nod to lullabies divine, A ...

Never was dashed out, at one lucky hit, A fool, so just a copy of a wit; So like, that critics said, and courtiers swore, A wit ...

On this he sits, to that he leans his ear, 70 And hears the various vows of fond mankind; Some beg an eastern, some a western wi ...

from Book the Fourth Yet, yet a moment, one dim ray of light Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night! Of darkness visible so muc ...

None want a place, for all their centre found, Hung to the goddess and cohered around. Not closer, orb in orb, conglobed are see ...

Words are man’s province, words we teach alone. When reason doubtful, like the Samian letter, Points him two ways; the narrower ...

Ah, think not, mistress! more true dullness lies In folly’s cap, than wisdom’s grave disguise. Like buoys that never sink into t ...

It stopt, I stopt; it moved, I moved again. At last it fixed, ’twas on what plant it pleased, And where it fixed, the beauteous ...

Unfinished treaties in each office slept; And chiefless armies dozed out the campaign; And navies yawned for orders on the main. ...

Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all. Compose ...