Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (123 page)

Solitude

Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

HAPPY the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
     
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
  
5
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
     
In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcern’dly find
Hours, days, and years, slide soft away
  
10
In health of body, peace of mind,
     
Quiet by day.

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix’d, sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
  
15
     
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
     
Tell where I lie.
  
20

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

On a Certain Lady at Court (Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk)

Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

I KNOW a thing that’s most uncommon
 
(Envy, be silent, and attend);
I know a reasonable woman,
 
Handsome and witty, yet a friend.

Not warped by passion, awed by rumour,
  
5
 
Not grave through pride, or gay through folly;
An equal mixture of good humour,
 
And sensible soft melancholy.

‘Has she no faults then,’ Envy says, ‘Sir?’
 
Yes, she has one, I must aver:
  
10
When all the world conspires to praise her
 
The woman’s deaf, and does not hear!

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

An Essay on Man: the Design

To H. St. John, L. Bolingbroke

Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

 
HAVING proposed to write some pieces on human life and manners, such as (to use my lord Bacon’s expression)
came home to men’s business and bosoms,
I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering Man in the abstract, his nature and his state; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being.
   
1
 
The science of human nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a few clear points: there are not many certain truths in this world. It is therefore in the anatomy of the mind as in that of the body; more good will accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation. The disputes are all upon these last, and I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice, more than advanced the theory of morality. If I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a temperate yet not inconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect, system of ethics.
   
2
 
This I might have done in prose; but I chose verse, and even rhyme, for two reasons. The one will appear obvious; that principles, maxims, or precepts so written, both strike the reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by him afterwards: the other may seem odd, but it is true; I found I could express them more shortly this way than that much of the force as well as grace of arguments or instructions depends on their conciseness. I was unable to treat this part of my subject more in detail, without becoming dry and tedious; or more poetically, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wandering from the precision, or breaking the chain of reasoning. If any man can unite all these without any diminution of any of them, I freely confess he will compass a thing above my capacity.
   
3
 
What is now published, is only to be considered as a general map of Man, marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits, and their connection, but leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the charts which are to follow. Consequently, these Epistles in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any progress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament. I am here only opening the fountains, and clearing the passage. To deduce the rivers, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects, may be a task more agreeable.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

An Essay on Man. Epistle I — Of the Nature and State of Man, with Respect to the Universe

Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

AWAKE, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us, and to die)
Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;
  
5
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A wild, where weeds and flow’rs promiscuous shoot;
 
Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield!
  
10
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise:
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
  
15
But vindicate the ways of God to man.
 
I. Say first, of God above, or man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of man, what see we but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
  
20
Thro’ worlds unnumber’d tho’ the God be known,
’Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who thro’ vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
  
25
What other planets circle other suns.
What vary’d being peoples every star,
May tell why heav’n has made us as we are.
But of this frame the bearings and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
  
30
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look’d thro’ or can a part contain the whole?
 
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
And drawn support, upheld by God, or thee?
 
II. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,
  
35
Why form’d so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why form’d no weaker, blinder, and no less?
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?
  
40
Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
Why Jove’s Satellites are less than Jove?
 
Of systems possible, if ’tis confest
That wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all must full or not coherent be,
  
45
And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then, in the scale of reas’ning life, ’tis plain,
 
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:
And all the question (wrangle e’er so long)
Is only this, if God has plac’d him wrong?
  
50
 
Respecting man whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.
In human works, tho’ labour’d on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God’s, one single can its end produce;
  
55
Yet serves to second too some other use.
So man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;
’Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
  
60
 
When the proud steed shall know why man restrains
His fiery course, or drives him o’er the plains;
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,
Is now a victim, and now Ægypt’s god:
Then shall man’s pride and dullness comprehend
  
65
His actions’, passions’, being’s, use and end;
Why doing, suff’ring, check’d, impell’d; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.
 
Then say not man’s imperfect, heav’n in fault;
Say rather, man’s as perfect as he ought:
  
70
His knowledge measur’d to his state and place;
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain sphere,
What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
The blest to-day is as completely so,
  
75
As who began a thousand years ago.
 
III. Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib’d, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
  
80
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas’d to the last, he crops the flow’ry food,
And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv’n,
  
85
That each may full the circle mark’d by heav’n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
 
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
  
90
 
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher death, and God adore.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
  
95
Man never
is,
but always
to be
blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
 
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
  
100
His soul, proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav’n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d,
  
105
Some happier island in the wat’ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To Be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire;
  
110
But thinks admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
 
IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against providence;
Call imperfection what thou fancy’st such,
  
115
Say, here he gives too little, there too much:
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, If man’s unhappy, God’s unjust;
If man alone ingross not Heav’n’s high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
  
120
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the God of God.
In pride, in reas’ning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes
  
125
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
 
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of order, sins against th’ eternal cause.
  
130
 
V. Ask for what end the heav’nly bodies shine,
Earth for whose use? pride answers, ‘’Tis for mine:
For me kind nature wakes her genial pow’r,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev’ry flow’r;
Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew
  
135
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;
For me, health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies.’
  
140
 
But errs not nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
‘No (’tis reply’d) the first almighty cause
  
145
Acts not by partial, but by gen’ral laws;
Th’ exceptions few; some change since all began:
And what created perfect?’ — Why then man?
If the great end be human happiness,
Then nature deviates; and can man do less?
  
150
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show’rs and sunshine, as of man’s desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men for ever temp’rate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav’n’s design,
  
155
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?
Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;
Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar’s mind,
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
  
160
From pride, from pride, our very reas’ning springs;
Account for moral as for nat’ral things:
Why charge we heav’n in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right is to submit.
 
Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
  
165
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind,
 
That never passion discompos’d the mind.
But all subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
  
170
The gen’ral order, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.
 
VI. What would this man? Now upward will he soar,
And little less than angel, would be more;
Now looking downwards, just as griev’d appears
  
175
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his use all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the pow’rs of all;
Nature to these, without profusion, kind,
The proper organs, proper pow’rs assign’d;
  
180
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:
  
185
Is Heav’n unkind to man, and man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
Be pleas’d with nothing, if not blest with all?
 
The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
  
190
No pow’rs of body, or of soul to share,
But what his nature and his state can bear.
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, man is not a fly.
Say what the use, were finer optics giv’n,
  
195
T’ inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav’n?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o’er,
To smart and agonize at ev’ry pore?
Or, quick effluvia darting thro’ the brain,
Die of a rose in aromatic pain?
  
200
If nature thunder’d in his op’ning ears,
And stunn’d him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heav’n had left him still
The whisp’ring zephyr, and the purling rill!
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
  
205
Alike in what it gives, and what denies?
 
VII. Far as creation’s ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental pow’rs ascends:
Mark how it mounts to man’s imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
  
210
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole’s dim curtain, and the lynx’s beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green:
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
  
215
To that which warbles through the vernal wood?
The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois’nous herbs extracts the healing dew:
  
220
How instinct varies in the grov’ling swine,
Compar’d, half reas’ning elephant, with thine!
‘Twixt that, and reason, what a nice barrier?
For ever sep’rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and reflection how ally’d;
  
225
What thin partitions sense from thought divide?
And middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th’ insuperable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?
  
230
The pow’rs of all subdu’d by thee alone,
Is not thy reason all these pow’rs in one?
 
VIII. See, thro’ this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high progressive life may go!
  
235
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Natures æthereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from infinite to thee,
  
240
From thee to nothing. On superior pow’rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,
From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
  
245
 
And, if each system in gradation roll
Alike essential to th’ amazing whole,
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let earth unbalanc’d from her orbit fly,
  
250
Planets and suns run lawless thro’ the sky;