Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

Notes

ODE ON SOLITUDE

Pope said that he wrote this poem when he was not yet 12
years old. The first copy dates from 1709 and the poem was
subsequently revised. The present version incorporates those
revisions.

2 paternal acres inherited land.

from BOETIUS, DE CONS. PHILOS.

A translation of the sixth-century Roman philosopher
Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy, III, 1, tentatively
dated not later than 1710.

2 ambient main surrounding sea.

ADRIANI MORIENTIS AD ANIMAM

(Literally, ‘To the soul of the dying Hadrian’) Hadrian was
Roman emperor AD 117–38. First alluded to in the Spectator
no. 532 of 10 November 1712 where Pope discusses the
original. The editor of the journal, Richard Steele, requested
him to write ‘an ode as of a cheerful dying spirit’, which
resulted in ‘The dying Christian to his soul’ See G.Sherburn,