ALEXANDER POPE : POPULAR POEMS

ALEXANDER POPE ( 1688 - 1744)

# 1.  AN ESSAY ON MAN

The First Epistle

Awake, my ST. JOHN!(1) 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(2) free o'er all this scene of Man;

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;

The latent tracts(3), 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;

But vindicate(4) the ways of God to Man.

1. 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?

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,

What other planets circle other suns,

What vary'd being peoples ev'ry 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,

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 supports, upheld by God, or thee?

II. Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find,

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?

Or ask of yonder argent fields(5) above,

Why JOVE'S Satellites are less than JOVE?(6)

Of Systems possible, if 'tis confest

That Wisdom infinite must form the best,

Where all must full or not coherent be,

And all that rises, rise in due degree;

Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain

There must be, somewhere, such rank as Man;

And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)

Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong?

Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call,

Nay, 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;

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.

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 Egypt's God:(7)

Then shall Man's pride and dullness comprehend

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;

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 today is as completely so,

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?

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,

That each may fill 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.

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:

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;

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,

Some happier island in the watry 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(8) fire;

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,

Say, here he gives too little, there too much;

Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,(9)

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:

Snatch from his hand the balance(10) 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,

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.

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

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."

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

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?

As much that end a constant course requires

Of show'rs and sun-shine, 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,

Why then a Borgia,(11) or a Catiline?(12)

Who knows but he, whose hand the light'ning forms,

Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storms,

Pours fierce Ambition in a Caesar's(13) mind,

Or turns young Ammon(14) loose to scourge mankind?

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,

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.

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,(15) would be more;

Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears

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;

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;

Is Heav'n unkind to Man, and Man alone?

Shall he alone, whom rational we call,

Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bless'd with all?

The bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find)

Is not to act or think beyond mankind;

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,

T' inspect a mite,(16) not comprehend the heav'n?

Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,

To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?

Or quick effluvia(17) darting thro' the brain,

Die of a rose in aromatic pain?

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,(18) and the purling rill?(19)

Who finds not Providence all good and wise,

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 people grass:

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(20) on the tainted(21) green:

Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,(22)

To that which warbles thro' the vernal(23) 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:(24)

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;

What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide:

And Middle natures,(25) 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?

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!

Around, how wide! how deep extend below!

Vast chain of being, which from God began,

Natures ethereal,(26) human, angel, man

Beast, bird, fish, insect! what no eye can see,

No glass can reach! from Infinite to thee,

From thee to Nothing! -- On superior pow'rs

Were we to press, inferior might on ours:

Or in the full creation leave a void,

Where, one step broken, the great scale's destoy'd:

From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,

Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

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,

Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky,

Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl'd,

Being on being wreck'd, and world on world,

Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,

And Nature tremble to the throne of God:

All this dread ORDER break -- for whom? for thee?

Vile worm! -- oh, Madness, Pride, Impiety!

IX. What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread,

Or hand to toil, aspir'd to be the head?

What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd(27)

To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?

Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains

The great directing MIND of ALL ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body, Nature is, and God the soul;

That, chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the same,

Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame,

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,

Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent,

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal parts,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;

As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,

As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns;

To him no high, no low, no great, no small;

He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

X. Cease then, nor ORDER Imperfection name:

Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.

Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree

Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.

Submit -- In this, or any other sphere,

Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:

Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,

Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.

All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;

All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;

All Discord, Harmony, not understood;

All partial Evil, universal Good:

And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,

One truth is clear, "Whatever IS, is RIGHT."

# 2.  From "The Dunciad"

The Mighty Mother, and her son who brings
The Smithfield Muses to the ear of Kings,
I sing. Say you, her instruments the great!
Call'd to this work by Dulness, Jove, and Fate;
You by whose care, in vain decried and curst,
Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first;
Say how the Goddess bade Britannia sleep,
And pour'd her Spirit, o'er the land and deep.
In eldest time, ere mortals writ or read,
Ere Pallas issued from the Thund'rer's head,
Dulness o'er all possess'd her ancient right,
Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night:
Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave,
Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave;
Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,
She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind.
Still her old empire to restore she tries,
For, born a Goddess, Dulness never dies.
O thou! whatever title please thine ear,
Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!
Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,
Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair,
Or praise the Court, or magnify Mankind,
Or thy griev'd country's copper chains unbind;
From thy Bœotia tho' her power retires,
Mourn not, my Swift! at aught our realm requires.
Here pleas'd behold her mighty wings out-spread
To hatch a new Saturnian age of Lead.
Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne,
And laughs to think Monroe would take her down,
Where o'er the gates, by his famed father's hand,
Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand;
One cell there is, conceal'd from vulgar eye,
The cave of Poverty and Poetry:

 

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JOHN DRYDEN : POPULAR POEMS

JOHN DRYDEN (1631 - 1700)

# 1 . MAC FLECKNOE

All human things are subject to decay,

And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:

This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young

Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:

In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute

Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.

This aged prince now flourishing in peace,

And blest with issue of a large increase,

Worn out with business, did at length debate

To settle the succession of the State:

And pond'ring which of all his sons was fit

To reign, and wage immortal war with wit;

Cry'd, 'tis resolv'd; for nature pleads that he

Should only rule, who most resembles me:

Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,

Mature in dullness from his tender years.

Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he

Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,

But Shadwell never deviates into sense.

Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,

Strike through and make a lucid interval;

But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray,

His rising fogs prevail upon the day:

Besides his goodly fabric fills the eye,

And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty:

Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain,

And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.

Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee,

Thou last great prophet of tautology:

Even I, a dunce of more renown than they,

Was sent before but to prepare thy way;

And coarsely clad in Norwich drugget came

To teach the nations in thy greater name.

My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung

When to King John of Portugal I sung,

Was but the prelude to that glorious day,

When thou on silver Thames did'st cut thy way,

With well tim'd oars before the royal barge,

Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge;

And big with hymn, commander of an host,

The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets toss'd.

Methinks I see the new Arion sail,

The lute still trembling underneath thy nail.

At thy well sharpen'd thumb from shore to shore

The treble squeaks for fear, the basses roar:

Echoes from Pissing-Alley, Shadwell call,

And Shadwell they resound from Aston Hall.

About thy boat the little fishes throng,

As at the morning toast, that floats along.

Sometimes as prince of thy harmonious band

Thou wield'st thy papers in thy threshing hand.

St. Andre's feet ne'er kept more equal time,

Not ev'n the feet of thy own Psyche's rhyme:

Though they in number as in sense excel;

So just, so like tautology they fell,

That, pale with envy, Singleton forswore

The lute and sword which he in triumph bore

And vow'd he ne'er would act Villerius more.

Here stopt the good old sire; and wept for joy

In silent raptures of the hopeful boy.

All arguments, but most his plays, persuade,

That for anointed dullness he was made.

Close to the walls which fair Augusta bind,

(The fair Augusta much to fears inclin'd)

An ancient fabric, rais'd t'inform the sight,

There stood of yore, and Barbican it hight:

A watch tower once; but now, so fate ordains,

Of all the pile an empty name remains.

From its old ruins brothel-houses rise,

Scenes of lewd loves, and of polluted joys.

Where their vast courts, the mother-strumpets keep,

And, undisturb'd by watch, in silence sleep.

Near these a nursery erects its head,

Where queens are form'd, and future heroes bred;

Where unfledg'd actors learn to laugh and cry,

Where infant punks their tender voices try,

And little Maximins the gods defy.

Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here,

Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear;

But gentle Simkin just reception finds

Amidst this monument of vanish'd minds:

Pure clinches, the suburbian muse affords;

And Panton waging harmless war with words.

Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well known,

Ambitiously design'd his Shadwell's throne.

For ancient Decker prophesi'd long since,

That in this pile should reign a mighty prince,

Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense:

To whom true dullness should some Psyches owe,

But worlds of Misers from his pen should flow;

Humorists and hypocrites it should produce,

Whole Raymond families, and tribes of Bruce.

Now Empress Fame had publisht the renown,

Of Shadwell's coronation through the town.

Rous'd by report of fame, the nations meet,

From near Bun-Hill, and distant Watling-street.

No Persian carpets spread th'imperial way,

But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay:

From dusty shops neglected authors come,

Martyrs of pies, and reliques of the bum.

Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby there lay,

But loads of Shadwell almost chok'd the way.

Bilk'd stationers for yeoman stood prepar'd,

And Herringman was Captain of the Guard.

The hoary prince in majesty appear'd,

High on a throne of his own labours rear'd.

At his right hand our young Ascanius sat

Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state.

His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace,

And lambent dullness play'd around his face.

As Hannibal did to the altars come,

Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome;

So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain,

That he till death true dullness would maintain;

And in his father's right, and realm's defence,

Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with sense.

The king himself the sacred unction made,

As king by office, and as priest by trade:

In his sinister hand, instead of ball,

He plac'd a mighty mug of potent ale;

Love's kingdom to his right he did convey,

At once his sceptre and his rule of sway;

Whose righteous lore the prince had practis'd young,

And from whose loins recorded Psyche sprung,

His temples last with poppies were o'er spread,

That nodding seem'd to consecrate his head:

Just at that point of time, if fame not lie,

On his left hand twelve reverend owls did fly.

So Romulus, 'tis sung, by Tiber's brook,

Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.

Th'admiring throng loud acclamations make,

And omens of his future empire take.

The sire then shook the honours of his head,

And from his brows damps of oblivion shed

Full on the filial dullness: long he stood,

Repelling from his breast the raging god;

At length burst out in this prophetic mood:

Heavens bless my son, from Ireland let him reign

To far Barbadoes on the Western main;

Of his dominion may no end be known,

And greater than his father's be his throne.

Beyond love's kingdom let him stretch his pen;

He paus'd, and all the people cry'd Amen.

Then thus, continu'd he, my son advance

Still in new impudence, new ignorance.

Success let other teach, learn thou from me

Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry.

Let Virtuosos in five years be writ;

Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit.

Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage,

Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage;

Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit,

And in their folly show the writer's wit.

Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence,

And justify their author's want of sense.

Let 'em be all by thy own model made

Of dullness, and desire no foreign aid:

That they to future ages may be known,

Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own.

Nay let thy men of wit too be the same,

All full of thee, and differing but in name;

But let no alien Sedley interpose

To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose.

And when false flowers of rhetoric thou would'st cull,

Trust Nature, do not labour to be dull;

But write thy best, and top; and in each line,

Sir Formal's oratory will be thine.

Sir Formal, though unsought, attends thy quill,

And does thy Northern Dedications fill.

Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame,

By arrogating Jonson's hostile name.

Let Father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise,

And Uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.

Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no part;

What share have we in Nature or in Art?

Where did his wit on learning fix a brand,

And rail at arts he did not understand?

Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein,

Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain?

Where sold he bargains, whip-stitch, kiss my arse,

Promis'd a play and dwindled to a farce?

When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin,

As thou whole Eth'ridge dost transfuse to thine?

But so transfus'd as oil on waters flow,

His always floats above, thine sinks below.

This is thy province, this thy wondrous way,

New humours to invent for each new play:

This is that boasted bias of thy mind,

By which one way, to dullness, 'tis inclin'd,

Which makes thy writings lean on one side still,

And in all changes that way bends thy will.

Nor let thy mountain belly make pretence

Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense.

A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ,

But sure thou 'rt but a kilderkin of wit.

Like mine thy gentle numbers feebly creep,

Thy Tragic Muse gives smiles, thy Comic sleep.

With whate'er gall thou sett'st thy self to write,

Thy inoffensive satires never bite.

In thy felonious heart, though venom lies,

It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies.

Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame

In keen iambics, but mild anagram:

Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command

Some peaceful province in acrostic land.

There thou may'st wings display and altars raise,

And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

Or if thou would'st thy diff'rent talents suit,

Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.

He said, but his last words were scarcely heard,

For Bruce and Longvil had a trap prepar'd,

And down they sent the yet declaiming bard.

Sinking he left his drugget robe behind,

Born upwards by a subterranean wind.

The mantle fell to the young prophet's part,

With double portion of his father's art.

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