The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings: Poems and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)

by Alexander Pope

  To some a dry rehearsal was assigned,

  And others (harder still) he paid in kind.

  Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh;

  Dryden alone escaped this judging eye:

  But still the great have kindness in reserve;

  He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.

  May some choice patron bless each grey goose quill!

  250 May ev’ry Bavius have his Bufo still!

  So when a statesman wants a day’s defence,

  Or envy holds a whole week’s war with sense,

  Or simple pride for flattery makes demands,

  May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!

  Blest be the great! for those they take away,

  And those they left me – for they left me Gay;

  Left me to see neglected genius bloom,

  Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb;

  Of all thy blameless life the sole return

  260 My verse, and Queensberry weeping o’er thy urn!

  Oh let me live my own, and die so too!

  (‘To live and die is all I have to do’);

  Maintain a poet’s dignity and ease,

  And see what friends, and read what books I please;

  Above a patron, though I condescend

  Sometimes to call a minister my friend.

  I was not born for courts or great affairs;

  I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers;

  Can sleep without a poem in my head,

  270 Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead.

  Why am I asked what next shall see the light?

  Heav’ns! was I born for nothing but to write?

  Has life no joys for me? or (to be grave)

  Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?

  ‘I found him close with Swift’ – ‘Indeed? no doubt

  (Cries prating Balbus) something will come out.’

  ’Tis all in vain, deny it as I will:

  ‘No, such a genius never can lie still’;

  And then for mine obligingly mistakes

  280 The first lampoon Sir Will or Bubo makes.

  Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile,

  When every coxcomb knows me by my style?

  Cursed be the verse, how well soe’er it flow,

  That tends to make one worthy man my foe,

  Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,

  Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear!

  But he who hurts a harmless neighbour’s peace,

  Insults fall’n worth, or beauty in distress,

  Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about,

  290 Who writes a libel, or who copies out;

  That fop whose pride affects a patron’s name,

  Yet absent, wounds an author’s honest fame;

  Who can your merit selfishly approve,

  And show the sense of it without the love;

  Who has the vanity to call you friend,

  Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend;

  Who tells whate’er you think, whate’er you say,

  And, if he lie not, must at least betray;

  Who to the dean and silver bell can swear,

  300 And sees at Cannons what was never there;

  Who reads but with a lust to misapply,

  Make satire a lampoon, and fiction lie:

  A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,

  But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.

  Let Sporus tremble – ‘What? that thing of silk,

  Sporus, that mere white curd of asses’ milk?’

  Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

  Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

  Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

  310 This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;

  Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,

  Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys:

  So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

  In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.

  Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

  As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.

  Whether in florid impotence he speaks,

  And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks,

  Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,

  320 Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad

  In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,

  Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies;

  His wit all see-saw between that and this,

  Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,

  And he himself one vile antithesis.

  Amphibious thing! that acting either part,

  The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,

  Fop at the toilet, flatt’rer at the board,

  Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.

  330 Eve’s tempter thus the rabbins have expressed:

  A cherub’s face, a reptile all the rest;

  Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,

  Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

  Not Fortune’s worshipper, nor fashion’s fool,

  Not lucre’s madman, nor ambition’s tool,

  Not proud nor servile; be one poet’s praise,

  That if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways;

  That flatt’ry, ev’n to kings, he held a shame,

  And thought a lie in verse or prose the same;

  340 That not in fancy’s maze he wandered long,

  But stooped to truth, and moralized his song;

  That not for fame, but virtue’s better end,

  He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,

  The damning critic, half-approving wit,

  The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;

  Laughed at the loss of friends he never had,

  The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;

  The distant threats of vengeance on his head,

  The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;

  350 The tale revived, the lie so oft o’erthrown,

  Th’ imputed trash and dullness not his own;

  The morals blackened when the writings ’scape,

  The libelled person, and the pictured shape;

  Abuse on all he loved, or loved him, spread,

  A friend in exile, or a father dead;

  The whisper, that to greatness still too near,

  Perhaps yet vibrates on his sovereign’s ear –

  Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past:

  For thee, fair Virtue! welcome ev’n the last!

  360 ‘But why insult the poor? affront the great?’

  A knave’s a knave to me in ev’ry state;

  Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,

  Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail;

  A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,

  Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;

  If on a pillory, or near a throne,

  He gain his prince’s ear, or lose his own.

  Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,

  Sappho can tell you how this man was bit:

  370 This dreaded sat’rist Dennis will confess

  Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress:

  So humble, he has knocked at Tibbald’s door,

  Has drunk with Cibber, nay, has rhymed for Moore.

  Full ten years slandered, did he once reply?

  Three thousand suns went down on Welsted’s lie.

  To please a mistress one aspersed his life;

  He lashed him not, but let her be his wife:

  Let Budgell charge low Grub Street on his quill,

  And write whate’er he pleased, except his will;

  380 Let the two Curlls of town and court abuse

  His father, mother, body, soul, and muse:

  Yet why? that father held it for a rule

  It was a sin to call our neighbour fool;

  That harmless mother tho
ught no wife a whore;

  Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore!

  Unspotted names, and memorable long!

  If there be force in virtue, or in song.

  Of gentle blood (part shed in Honour’s cause,

  While yet in Britain Honour had applause)

  390 Each parent sprung – ‘What fortune, pray?’ – Their own;

  And better got than Bestia’s from the throne.

  Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,

  Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,

  Stranger to civil and religious rage,

  The good man walked innoxious through his age:

  No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,

  Nor dared an oath, nor hazarded a lie.

  Unlearn’d, he knew no schoolman’s subtle art,

  No language but the language of the heart.

  400 By nature honest, by experience wise,

  Healthy by temp’rance and by exercise;

  His life, though long, to sickness passed unknown,

  His death was instant and without a groan.

  O grant me thus to live, and thus to die!

  Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.

  O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!

  Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:

  Me, let the tender office long engage

  To rock the cradle of reposing age,

  410 With lenient arts extend a mother’s breath,

  Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;

  Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,

  And keep a while one parent from the sky!

  On cares like these if length of days attend,

  May Heav’n, to bless those days, preserve my friend!

  Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,

  And just as rich as when he served a queen.

  Whether that blessing be denied or giv’n,

  Thus far was right; the rest belongs to Heav’n.

  [IMITATIONS OF HORACE]

  Satire, II, i

  To Mr Fortescue

  P. There are (I scarce can think it, but am told),

  There are to whom my satire seems too bold,

  Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough,

  And something said of Chartres much too rough.

  The lines are weak, another’s pleased to say;

  Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day.

  Tim’rous by nature, of the rich in awe,

  I come to counsel learnèd in the law:

  You’ll give me, like a friend both sage and free,

  10 Advice; and (as you use) without a fee.

  Fr. I’d write no more.

  P. Not write? but then I think,

  And for my soul I cannot sleep a wink.

  I nod in company, I wake at night;

  Fools rush into my head, and so I write.

  Fr. You could not do a worse thing for your life.

  Why, if the night seem tedious – take a wife;

  Or rather, truly, if your point be rest,

  Lettuce and cowslip wine; probatum est.

  But talk with Celsus, Celsus will advise

  20 Hartshorn, or something that shall close your eyes.

  Or if you needs must write, write Caesar’s praise;

  You’ll gain at least a knighthood, or the bays.

  P. What? like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce,

  With arms, and George, and Brunswick, crowd the verse;

  Rend with tremendous sound your ears asunder,

  With gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder?

  Or nobly wild, with Budgell’s fire and force,

  Paint angels trembling round his falling horse?

  Fr. Then all your Muse’s softer art display,

  30 Let Carolina smooth the tuneful lay;

  Lull with Amelia’s liquid name the Nine,

  And sweetly flow through all the royal line.

  P. Alas! few verses touch their nicer ear;

  They scarce can bear their laureate twice a year;

  And justly Caesar scorns the poet’s lays;

  It is to history he trusts for praise.

  Fr. Better be Cibber, I’ll maintain it still,

  Than ridicule all taste, blaspheme quadrille,

  Abuse the city’s best good men in metre,

  40 And laugh at peers that put their trust in Peter.

  Ev’n those you touch not, hate you.

  P. What should ail ’em?

  Fr. A hundred smart in Timon and in Balaam:

  The fewer still you name, you wound the more;

  Bond is but one, but Harpax is a score.

  P. Each mortal has his pleasure: none deny

  Scarsdale his bottle, Darty his ham-pie;

  Ridotta sips and dances till she see

  The doubling lustres dance as fast as she:

  Fox loves the senate, Hockley Hole his brother,

  50 Like in all else, as one egg to another.

  I love to pour out all myself, as plain

  As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne:

  In them, as certain to be loved as seen,

  The soul stood forth, nor kept a thought within;

  In me what spots (for spots I have) appear

  Will prove at least the medium must be clear.

  In this impartial glass, my Muse intends

  Fair to expose myself, my foes, my friends;

  Publish the present age, but where my text

  60 Is vice too high, reserve it for the next;

  My foes shall wish my life a longer date,

  And ev’ry friend the less lament my fate.

  My head and heart thus flowing through my quill,

  Verse-man or prose-man, term me which you will,

  Papist or Protestant, or both between,

  Like good Erasmus, in an honest mean,

  In moderation placing all my glory,

  While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.

  Satire’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet

  70 To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet;

  I only wear it in a land of Hectors,

  Thieves, supercargoes, sharpers, and directors.

  Save but our army! and let Jove encrust

  Swords, pikes, and guns, with everlasting rust!

  Peace is my dear delight – not Fleury’s more:

  But touch me, and no minister so sore.

  Whoe’er offends, at some unlucky time

  Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme,

  Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,

  80 And the sad burden of some merry song.

  Slander or poison dread from Delia’s rage;

  Hard words or hanging, if your judge be Page;

  From furious Sappho scarce a milder fate,

  Poxed by her love, or libelled by her hate.

  Its proper pow’r to hurt each creature feels;

  Bulls aim their horns, and asses lift their heels;

  ’Tis a bear’s talent not to kick, but hug;

  And no man wonders he’s not stung by pug.

  So drink with Walters, or with Chartres eat,

  90 They’ll never poison you, they’ll only cheat.

  Then, learned sir! (to cut the matter short)

  Whate’er my fate, or well or ill at court,

  Whether old age, with faint but cheerful ray,

  Attends to gild the evening of my day,

  Or death’s black wing already be displayed

  To wrap me in the universal shade;

  Whether the darkened room to Muse invite,

  Or whitened wall provoke the skewer to write:

  In durance, exile, Bedlam, or the Mint,

  100 Like Lee or Budgell, I will rhyme and print.

  Fr. Alas, young man, your days can ne’er be long:

  In flow’r of age you perish for a song!

  Plums and directors, Shylock and his wife,

  Will club their
testers now to take your life.

  P. What? armed for virtue when I point the pen,

  Brand the bold front of shameless, guilty men,

  Dash the proud gamester in his gilded car,

  Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star;

  Can there be wanting, to defend her cause,

  110 Lights of the church, or guardians of the laws?

  Could pensioned Boileau lash in honest strain

  Flatt’rers and bigots ev’n in Louis’ reign?

  Could laureate Dryden pimp and friar engage,

  Yet neither Charles nor James be in a rage?

  And I not strip the gilding off a knave,

  Unplaced, unpensioned, no man’s heir, or slave?

  I will, or perish in the gen’rous cause:

  Hear this, and tremble! you, who ’scape the laws.

  Yes, while I live, no rich or noble knave

  120 Shall walk the world, in credit, to his grave:

  To VIRTUE ONLY and HER FRIENDS, A FRIEND,

  The world beside may murmur, or commend.

  Know, all the distant din that world can keep

  Rolls o’er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep.

  There my retreat the best companions grace,

  Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place:

  There St John mingles with my friendly bowl

  The feast of reason and the flow of soul;

  And he, whose lightning pierced th’ Iberian lines,

  130 Now forms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines,

  Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain,

  Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.

  Envy must own, I live among the great

  No pimp of pleasure, and no spy of state,

  With eyes that pry not, tongue that ne’er repeats,

  Fond to spread friendships, but to cover heats;

  To help who want, to forward who excel;

  This all who know me, know; who love me, tell;

  And who unknown defame me, let them be

  140 Scribblers or peers, alike are mob to me.

  This is my plea, on this I rest my cause –

  What saith my counsel learned in the laws?

  Fr. Your plea is good; but still I say, beware!

  Laws are explained by men – so have a care.

  It stands on record that in Richard’s times