Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

glory’, recalling a phrase rejected in the second couplet,
‘shoots a flood’. A final change to ‘Then shine the vales’
improves further by drawing attention to the time sequence
and by giving emphasis to the increasing light in ‘shine’.
In the completed version, movement and colour advance in
delicate stages. The light ‘spreads’ in the first couplet; in the
second movement is suspended, in the third it is advanced
with the ‘vivid’ planets and the starlight that ‘gilds’ the
‘glowing’ pole; in the fourth there is more colour with the
comparative ‘yellower’ and the silver light on the mountains,
but the movement is still delicate with the verbs ‘shed’ and
‘tip’; finally the valleys ‘shine’ and then comes the strongest
burst in the ‘flood of glory’.
In the final couplet of the simile there is also radical change:
The conscious shepherd, joyful at the sight,
Eyes the blue vault, and numbers every light.

becomes:

The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,

shepherds, gazing with delight,

Eye the blue vault, and bless the vivid light.

glorious

useful

Here the modern reader may perhaps regret this change in the
first line, but must be grateful that Pope amended the
infelicity of the second. The final thought, ‘useful’, extends
the significance of Pope’s emphasis in the simile upon the
‘vivid’ and the ‘glorious’. That the shepherds should ‘bless the
useful light’ makes explicit the spiritual meaning with which
he invests the scene.
Finally it may be noted that Pope did not abandon the first
thoughts, images, and words that the simile had prompted.
When he goes on to describe the effect of the fires, the
reflected light ‘glimmers’, ‘gleams’, and ‘trembles’, and the
fires ‘shoot a shady lustre’; but as he imagined the whole
scene more powerfully and more precisely he separated the
gradually evolving clarity in the natural scene of the simile
from the flickering evanescent half-light in the human sphere
to which it is related: