Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

Now turned to Heaven, I weep my past offence, Now think of thee, and curse my innocence. Of all affliction taught a lover yet, ‘ ...

Fancy restores what vengeance snatched away, Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free, All my loose soul unbounded spring ...

Rise in the grove, before the altar rise, Stain all my soul, and wanton in my eyes. I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee, Th ...

Propped on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead. In each low wind methinks a spirit calls, And more than echoes talk along the wal ...

May one kind grave unite each hapless name, And graft my love immortal on thy fame! Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o’er, ...

For those who greatly think, or bravely die? 10 Why bade ye else, ye powers! her soul aspire Above the vulgar flight of low desi ...

No friend’s complaint, no kind domestic tear Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier. 50 By foreign hands thy dying ...

THE ILIAD OF HOMER from the preface Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any writer whatever. The ...

they are overrun and oppressed by those of a stronger nature. It is to the strength of this amazing invention we are to attribut ...

I shall here endeavour to show how this vast invention exerts itself in a manner superior to that of any poet, through all the m ...

reflections or thoughts which might be equally just in any person’s mouth upon the same occasion. As many of his persons have no ...

enlivened forms of it. We acknowledge him the father of poetical diction, the first who taught that language of the gods to men. ...

his sentiments more warm and sublime, his images and descriptions more full and animated, his expression more raised and daring, ...

counselling with the gods, laying plans for empires, and regularly ordering his whole creation. Nothing that belongs to Homer se ...

For a farther preservation of this air of simplicity, a particular care should be taken to express with all plainness those mora ...

Each aching nerve refuse the lance to throw, And each spent courser at the chariot blow. Who dares, inglorious, in his ships to ...

Or leaves the trees; or thick as insects play, The wandering nation of a summer’s day: That, drawn by milky steams, at evening h ...

So many flames before proud Ilion blaze, And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays. The long reflections of the distant fir ...

Descends a lion on the flocks below; So stalks the lordly savage o’er the plain, In sullen majesty, and stern disdain: In vain l ...

He said; his words the listening chief inspire With equal warmth, and rouse the warrior’s fire; The troops pursue their leaders ...