Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield! 10 The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore ...

The whispering zephyr, and the purling rill? Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it gives and what denies? ...

Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurle ...

Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot: Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void, ...

Learn of the little nautilus to sail, Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. 30 Here too all forms of social union fin ...

More powerful each as needful to the rest, And, in proportion as it blesses, blest; Draw to one point, and to one centre bring B ...

EPISTLE TO A LADY. OF THE CHARACTERS OF WOMEN Nothing so true as what you once let fall: ‘Most women have no characters at all.’ ...

Papillia, wedded to her doting spark, Sighs for the shades—‘How charming is a park!’ A park is purchased, but the fair he sees A ...

She sins with poets through pure love of wit. What has not fired her bosom or her brain? Cæsar and Tall-boy, Charles and Charlem ...

But what are these to great Atossa’s mind? Scarce once herself, by turns all womankind! Who, with herself, or others, from her b ...

Some flying stroke alone can hit them right: For how should equal colours do the knack? Cameleons who can paint in white and bla ...

If Queensberry to strip there’s no compelling, ’Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen. From peer or bishop ’tis no easy thing ...

Still out of reach, yet never out of view; Sure, if they catch, to spoil the toy at most, To covet flying, and regret when lost: ...

Heaven, when it strives to polish all it can Its last best work, but forms a softer man; Picks from each sex, to make the favour ...

please long, if at all; and the best examples and rules will be but perverted into something burdensome or ridiculous, ver. 65, ...

Bids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide: 20 A standing sermon, at each year’s expense, That never coxcomb reached magnificen ...

Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale, Or scoops in circling theatres the vale; 60 Calls in the country, catches open ...

Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade. At Timon’s villa let us pass a day, Where all cry out, ‘What sums are thrown awa ...

Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good For all his Lordship knows, but they are wood. For Locke or Milton ’tis in vain to loo ...

Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil?— Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle. ’Tis use alone that sanctifi ...