Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

(Tina Meador) #1

Words are man’s province, words we teach alone.
When reason doubtful, like the Samian letter,
Points him two ways; the narrower is the better.
Placed at the door of learning, youth to guide,
We never suffer it to stand too wide.
To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence,
As fancy opens the quick springs of sense, 80
We ply the memory, we load the brain,
Bind rebel wit, and double chain on chain;
Confine the thought, to exercise the breath;
And keep them in the pale of words till death.’


Prompt at the call, around the goddess roll
Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal:
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred head of Aristotle’s friends.


Before them marched that awful Aristarch;
Ploughed was his front with many a deep remark: 90
His hat, which never vailed to human pride,
Walker with reverence took and laid aside.
Low bowed the rest: he, kingly, did but nod;
So upright Quakers please both man and God.
‘Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne:
Avaunt—is Aristarchus yet unknown?
Thy mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton’s strains.
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain,
Critics like me shall make it prose again.... 100
In ancient sense if any needs will deal,
Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal;
What Gellius or Stobaeus hashed before,
Or chewed by blind old scholiasts o’er and o’er.
The critic eye, that microscope of wit,
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit:
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,
The body’s harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see
When man’s whole frame is obvious to a flea. 110


[298–306]
Free download pdf