Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

improves upon ‘glow’ by sharpening the connection between
the moon and the moonlit planets. (The fact that the planets
do not revolve around the moon is immaterial; at night they
may be imagined to do so.) In the second line ‘gild the
glowing pole’ gives the mind and ear something more distinct
than the phrase it replaces, harking back to the sharp clarity
in the ‘clear azure’ (here ‘pure’ is judiciously rejected in
favour of ‘clear’ on the grounds of both sense and sound). In
the fourth couplet Pope’s expression is made neater and more
pointed:

Clear gleams of light o’er the dark trees are seen,

o’er the dark trees a yellow sheds,

And tip with silver all the mountain heads.

forest

In the revision:

O’er the dark trees a yellower green they shed,

gleam

verdure

And tip with silver every mountain’s head.

In the first line the simple antithesis of ‘clear’ and ‘dark’ is
improved upon with the addition of the more daring ‘yellower
verdure’ to express the paradoxical quality of moonlight, but
the phrase is less bold and more subtle than ‘yellower green’
since verdure more obviously includes vegetation as well as
colour. In the fifth couplet the improvement is radical:

The valleys open, and the forests rise,

All nature stands revealed before our eyes

becomes

The vales appear, the rocks in prospect rise,

A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.

The opening up of the scene as the moonlight spreads is finely
suggested in ‘the rocks in prospect rise’. We may note here the
change of ‘sheds’ to ‘spreads’ in the first line of the simile; in
the final version of the whole there is a gradual spreading of
the light, brought to a dramatic climax here with the ‘flood of