Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

They hear, they run; and, gathering at his call, Raise scaling engines, and ascend the wall: Around the works a wood of glitteri ...

When now Sarpedon his brave friends beheld Grovelling in dust, and gasping on the field, With this reproach his flying host he w ...

Let Sleep and Death convey, by thy command, 160 The breathless body to his native land. His friends and people, to his future pr ...

Then as the mountain oak, or poplar tall, 200 Or pine (fit mast for some great admiral) Nods to the axe, till with a groaning so ...

Lies undistinguished from the vulgar dead. His long-disputed corpse the chiefs enclose, 240 On every side the busy combat grows; ...

O’er all his limbs ambrosial odours shed, And with celestial robes adorn the dead. Those rites discharged, his sacred corpse beq ...

His clamorous grief the bellowing wood resounds. So grieves Achilles; and, impetuous, vents To all his Myrmidons his loud lament ...

Last o’er the dead the milk-white veil they threw; That done, their sorrows and their sighs renew. Thus having said, the father ...

The youthful dancers in a circle bound To the soft flute, and cithern’s silver sound: 90 Through the fair streets the matrons in ...

Rush sudden; hills of slaughter heap the ground; Whole flocks and herds lie bleeding on the plains, And, all amidst them, dead, ...

Next, ripe in yellow gold, a vineyard shines, Bent with the ponderous harvest of its vines; A deeper dye the dangling clusters s ...

With well-taught feet: now shape in oblique ways, Confusedly regular, the moving maze: Now forth at once, too swift for sight, t ...

‘Suppress, my son, this rage of grief, and know It was not man, but heaven, that gave the blow; Behold what arms by Vulcan are b ...

And, like the moon, the broad refulgent shield Blazed with long rays, and gleamed athwart the field. 50 So to night-wandering sa ...

(Unless ye boast that heavenly race in vain,) Be swift, be mindful of the load ye bear, And learn to make your master more your ...

Part to the town fly diverse o’er the plain, Where late their troops triumphant bore the fight, Now chased, and trembling in ign ...

But late made captive in his father’s land.... Ten days were past, since in his father’s reign He felt the sweets of liberty aga ...

Whom late thy conquering arm to Lemnos bore, Far from his father, friends, and native shore; A hundred oxen were his price that ...

And thus insults him, floating on the wave: ‘Lie there, Lycaon! let the fish surround Thy bloated corpse, and suck thy gory woun ...

Was not the mandate of the sire above Full and express, that Phoebus should employ 160 His sacred arrows in defence of Troy, And ...