The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings

by Alexander Pope

‘My dear Tibullus!’ if that will not do,

  ‘Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you:

  Or, I’m content, allow me Dryden’s strains,

  And you shall rise up Otway for your pains.’

  Much do I suffer, much, to keep in peace

  This jealous, waspish, wronghead, rhyming race;

  And much must flatter, if the whim should bite,

  150 To court applause by printing what I write:

  But let the fit pass o’er; I’m wise enough

  To stop my ears to their confounded stuff.

  In vain bad rhymers all mankind reject,

  They treat themselves with most profound respect;

  ’Tis to small purpose that you hold your tongue,

  Each, praised within, is happy all day long.

  But how severely with themselves proceed

  The men who write such verse as we can read?

  Their own strict judges, not a word they spare

  160 That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care,

  Howe’er unwillingly it quits its place,

  Nay, though at court (perhaps) it may find grace:

  Such they’ll degrade; and sometimes, in its stead,

  In downright charity revive the dead;

  Mark where a bold expressive phrase appears,

  Bright through the rubbish of some hundred years;

  Command old words, that long have slept, to wake,

  Words that wise Bacon or brave Raleigh spake;

  Or bid the new be English, ages hence

  170 (For use will father what’s begot by sense),

  Pour the full tide of eloquence along,

  Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong,

  Rich with the treasures of each foreign tongue;

  Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine,

  But show no mercy to an empty line;

  Then polish all, with so much life and ease,

  You think ’tis nature, and a knack to please;

  ‘But ease in writing flows from art, not chance,

  As those move easiest who have learned to dance.’

  180 If such the plague and pains to write by rule,

  Better (say I) be pleased, and play the fool;

  Call, if you will, bad rhyming a disease,

  It gives men happiness, or leaves them ease.

  There lived in primo Georgii (they record)

  A worthy member, no small fool, a lord;

  Who, though the House was up, delighted sate,

  Heard, noted, answered, as in full debate:

  In all but this a man of sober life,

  Fond of his friend, and civil to his wife;

  190 Not quite a madman, though a pasty fell,

  And much too wise to walk into a well.

  Him the damned doctors and his friends immured,

  They bled, they cupped, they purged; in short they cured

  Whereat the gentleman began to stare –

  ‘My friends?’ he cried, ‘pox take you for your care!

  That from a Patriot of distinguished note

  Have bled and purged me to a simple vote.’

  Well, on the whole, plain prose must be my fate:

  Wisdom (curse on it) will come soon or late.

  200 There is a time when poets will grow dull;

  I’ll e’en leave verses to the boys at school.

  To rules of poetry no more confined,

  I learn to smooth and harmonize my mind,

  Teach ev’ry thought within its bounds to roll,

  And keep the equal measure of the soul.

  Soon as I enter at my country door,

  My mind resumes the thread it dropped before;

  Thoughts which at Hyde Park Corner I forgot,

  Meet and rejoin me in the pensive grot:

  210 There all alone, and compliments apart,

  I ask these sober questions of my heart.

  If, when the more you drink, the more you crave,

  You tell the doctor; when the more you have,

  The more you want, why not, with equal ease,

  Confess as well your folly as disease?

  The heart resolves this matter in a trice,

  ‘Men only feel the smart, but not the vice.’

  When golden angels cease to cure the evil,

  You give all royal witchcraft to the devil;

  220 When servile chaplains cry that birth and place

  Endue a peer with honour, truth, and grace,

  Look in that breast, most dirty Duke! be fair,

  Say, can you find out one such lodger there?

  Yet still, not heeding what your heart can teach,

  You go to church to hear these flatt’rers preach.

  Indeed, could wealth bestow or wit or merit,

  A grain of courage, or a spark of spirit,

  The wisest man might blush, I must agree,

  If vile Van-muck loved sixpence more than he.

  230 If there be truth in law, and use can give

  A property, that’s yours on which you live.

  Delightful Abscourt, if its fields afford

  Their fruits to you, confesses you its lord:

  All Worldly’s hens, nay partridge, sold to town,

  His ven’son too, a guinea makes your own:

  He bought at thousands what, with better wit,

  You purchase as you want, and bit by bit;

  Now, or long since, what diff’rence will be found:

  You pay a penny, and he paid a pound.

  240 Heathcote himself, and such large-acred men,

  Lords of fat E’sham, or of Lincoln Fen,

  Buy every stick of wood that lends them heat,

  Buy every pullet they afford to eat;

  Yet these are wights who fondly call their own

  Half that the devil o’erlooks from Lincoln town.

  The laws of God, as well as of the land,

  Abhor a perpetuity should stand:

  Estates have wings, and hang in fortune’s pow’r,

  Loose on the point of ev’ry wav’ring hour,

  250 Ready, by force, or of your own accord,

  By sale, at least by death, to change their lord.

  Man? and forever? wretch! what wouldst thou have?

  Heir urges heir, like wave impelling wave.

  All vast possessions (just the same the case

  Whether you call them villa, park, or chase),

  Alas, my Bathurst! what will they avail?

  Join Cotswood hills to Sapperton’s fair dale,

  Let rising granaries and temples here,

  There mingled farms and pyramids appear,

  260 Link towns to towns with avenues of oak,

  Enclose whole downs in walls, ’tis all a joke!

  Inexorable death shall level all,

  And trees, and stones, and farms, and farmer fall.

  Gold, silver, iv’ry, vases sculptured high,

  Paint, marble, gems, and robes of Persian dye,

  There are who have not – and, thank Heav’n, there are

  Who, if they have not, think not worth their care.

  Talk what you will of taste, my friend, you’ll find

  Two of a face as soon as of a mind.

  270 Why, of two brothers, rich and restless one

  Ploughs, burns, manures, and toils from sun to sun;

  The other slights, for women, sports, and wines,

  All Townshend’s turnips, and all Grosvenor’s mines;

  Why one like Bubb with pay and scorn content,

  Bows and votes on, in court and Parliament;

  One, driv’n by strong benevolence of soul,

  Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole:

  Is known alone to that directing Pow’r

  Who forms the genius in the natal hour;

  280 That God of Nature, who, within us still,

  Inclines our action, not constrains our will;

  Various of temper, as of face or frame,
r />   Each individual: his great end the same.

  Yes, sir, how small soever be my heap,

  A part I will enjoy, as well as keep.

  My heir may sigh, and think it want of grace

  A man so poor would live without a place,

  But sure no statute in his favour says,

  How free, or frugal, I shall pass my days;

  290 I who at some times spend, at others spare,

  Divided between carelessness and care.

  ’Tis one thing madly to disperse my store;

  Another, not to heed to treasure more;

  Glad, like a boy, to snatch the first good day,

  And pleased if sordid want be far away.

  What is’t to me (a passenger, God wot)

  Whether my vessel be first-rate or not?

  The ship itself may make a better figure,

  But I that sail am neither less nor bigger.

  300 I neither strut with ev’ry favouring breath,

  Nor strive with all the tempest in my teeth;

  In pow’r, wit, figure, virtue, fortune, placed

  Behind the foremost, and before the last.

  ‘But why all this of avarice? I have none.’

  I wish you joy, sir, of a tyrant gone;

  But does no other lord it at this hour

  As wild and mad? the avarice of power?

  Does neither rage inflame, nor fear appal?

  Not the black fear of death, that saddens all?

  310 With terrors round, can reason hold her throne,

  Despise the known, nor tremble at th’ unknown?

  Survey both worlds, intrepid and entire,

  In spite of witches, devils, dreams, and fire?

  Pleased to look forward, pleased to look behind,

  And count each birthday with a grateful mind?

  Has life no sourness, drawn so near its end?

  Canst thou endure a foe, forgive a friend?

  Has age but melted the rough parts away,

  As winter fruits grow mild ere they decay?

  320 Or will you think, my friend, your business done,

  When of a hundred thorns, you pull out one?

  Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;

  You’ve played, and loved, and ate, and drank your fill.

  Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age

  Comes titt’ring on, and shoves you from the stage:

  Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease,

  Whom folly pleases, and whose follies please.

  Ode, IV, i

  To Venus

  Again? new tumults in my breast?

  Ah spare me, Venus! let me, let me rest!

  I am not now, alas! the man

  As in the gentle reign of my Queen Anne.

  Ah sound no more thy soft alarms,

  Nor circle sober fifty with thy charms.

  Mother too fierce of dear desires!

  Turn, turn to willing hearts your wanton fires:

  To number five direct your doves,

  10 There spread round Murray all your blooming loves;

  Noble and young, who strikes the heart

  With ev’ry sprightly, ev’ry decent part;

  Equal, the injured to defend,

  To charm the mistress, or to fix the friend.

  He, with a hundred arts refined,

  Shall stretch thy conquests over half the kind;

  To him each rival shall submit,

  Make but his riches equal to his wit.

  Then shall thy form the marble grace,

  20 (Thy Grecian form) and Chloe lend the face.

  His house, embosomed in the grove,

  Sacred to social life and social love,

  Shall glitter o’er the pendant green,

  Where Thames reflects the visionary scene:

  Thither the silver sounding lyres

  Shall call the smiling loves, and young desires;

  There every Grace and Muse shall throng,

  Exalt the dance, or animate the song;

  There youths and nymphs, in consort gay,

  30 Shall hail the rising, close the parting day.

  With me, alas! those joys are o’er;

  For me the vernal garlands bloom no more.

  Adieu! fond hope of mutual fire,

  The still believing, still renewed desire;

  Adieu! the heart-expanding bowl,

  And all the kind deceivers of the soul!

  But why? ah tell me, ah too dear!

  Steals down my cheek th’ involuntary tear?

  Why words so flowing, thoughts so free,

  40 Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee?

  Thee, dressed in fancy’s airy beam,

  Absent I follow through th’ extended dream;

  Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms,

  And now you burst (ah, cruel!) from my arms,

  And swiftly shoot along the mall,

  Or softly glide by the canal,

  Now shown by Cynthia’s silver ray,

  And now on rolling waters snatched away.

  Ode, IV, ix

  Lest you should think that verse shall die

  Which sounds the silver Thames along,

  Taught on the wings of truth to fly

  Above the reach of vulgar song;

  Though daring Milton sits sublime,

  In Spenser native muses play;

  Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,

  Nor pensive Cowley’s moral lay.

  Sages and chiefs long since had birth

  10 Ere Caesar was, or Newton named;

  These raised new empires o’er the earth,

  And those new heav’ns and systems framed.

  Vain was the chief’s and sage’s pride!

  They had no poet, and they died!

  In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!

  They had no poet, and are dead!

  EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES

  Dialogue I

  Fr. Not twice a twelvemonth you appear in print,

  And when it comes, the court see nothing in’t;

  You grow correct that once with rapture writ,

  And are, besides, too moral for a wit.

  Decay of parts, alas! we all must feel –

  Why now, this moment, don’t I see you steal?

  ’Tis all from Horace; Horace long before ye

  Said ‘Tories called him Whig, and Whigs a Tory’,

  And taught his Romans, in much better metre,

  10 ‘To laugh at fools who put their trust in Peter.’

  But Horace, sir, was delicate, was nice;

  Bubo observes, he lashed no sort of vice:

  Horace would say, Sir Billy served the crown,

  Blunt could do business, Higgins knew the town;

  In Sappho touch the failings of the sex,

  In rev’rend bishops note some small neglects,

  And own the Spaniard did a waggish thing

  Who cropped our ears, and sent them to the king.

  His sly, polite, insinuating style

  20 Could please at court, and make Augustus smile;

  An artful manager, that crept between

  His friend and shame, and was a kind of screen.

  But ’faith, your very friends will soon be sore;

  Patriots there are, who wish you’d jest no more –

  And where’s the glory? ’twill be only thought

  The Great Man never offered you a groat.

  Go see Sir Robert –

  P. See Sir Robert! – hum –

  And never laugh – for all my life to come?

  Seen him I have, but in his happier hour

  30 Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for pow’r;

  Seen him, uncumbered with a venal tribe,

  Smile without art, and win without a bribe.

  Would he oblige me? let me only find

  He does not think me what he thinks mankind.

  Come, come, at all I laugh he laughs, no d
oubt;

  The only diff’rence is – I dare laugh out.

  Fr. Why, yes: with Scripture still you may be free;

  A horse laugh, if you please, at honesty;

  A joke on Jekyl, or some odd Old Whig,

  40 Who never changed his principle, or wig;

  A Patriot is a fool in ev’ry age,

  Whom all lord chamberlains allow the stage:

  These nothing hurts; they keep their fashion still,

  And wear their strange old virtue as they will.

  If any ask you, ‘Who’s the man, so near

  His Prince, that writes in verse, and has his ear?’

  Why, answer ‘Lyttelton!’ and I’ll engage

  The worthy youth shall ne’er be in a rage;

  But were his verses vile, his whisper base,

  50 You’d quickly find him in Lord Fanny’s case.

  Sejanus, Wolsey, hurt not honest Fleury,

  But well may put some statesmen in a fury.

  Laugh then at any, but at fools or foes;

  These you but anger, and you mend not those.

  Laugh at your friends, and if your friends are sore,

  So much the better, you may laugh the more.

  To vice and folly to confine the jest

  Sets half the world, God knows, against the rest,

  Did not the sneer of more impartial men

  60 At sense and virtue balance all again.

  Judicious wits spread wide the ridicule,

  And charitably comfort knave and fool.

  P. Dear sir, forgive the prejudice of youth:

  Adieu distinction, satire, warmth, and truth!

  Come, harmless characters that no one hit;

  Come, Henley’s oratory, Osborne’s wit!

  The honey dropping from Favonio’s tongue,

  The flow’rs of Bubo, and the flow of Young!

  The gracious dew of pulpit eloquence,

  70 And all the well-whipped cream of courtly sense;

  The first was Hervey’s, Fox’s next, and then

  The Senate’s, and then Hervey’s once again.

  O come! that easy Ciceronian style,