You then whose judgment the right course would steer,
Know well each Ancient's proper character:

His fable, subject, scope in every page;
Religion, country, genius of his age:
Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may, but never criticise.

Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;

Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring
And trace the Muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.

BELINDA AND THE BARON
(From The Rape of the Lock, Canto II.)

NOT with more glories, in the ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames.

Fair nymphs and well-dressed youths around her shone,
But every eye was fixed on her alone.

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those:
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
If to her share some female errors fall,

Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck,
With shining ringlets, the smooth ivory neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.

With hairy springes we the birds betray.
Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey,
Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.

The adventurous Baron the bright locks admired; He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired. Resolved to win, he meditates the way, By force to ravish, or by fraud betray; For when success a lover's toil attends, Few ask, if fraud or force attained his ends.

For this, ere Phœbus rose, he had implored Propitious Heaven, and every power adored; But chiefly Love--to Love an altar built, Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves; And all the trophies of his former loves: With tender billets-doux he lights the pyre, And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire. Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize: The powers gave ear, and granted half his prayer, The rest, the winds dispersed in empty air.

THE PRIDE OF REASON

(From An Essay on Man, Epistle I.)

HEAVEN from all creatures hides the book of Fatę,
All but the page prescribed, 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?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven.
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

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 confined from home, Rests and expiates in a life to come,

Lo, the poor Indian ! whose untutored inind 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 given,

Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, Some happier island in the watery waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thrist for gold.
To Be, contents his natural desire,

He asks no angel's wings, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
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 engross not Heaven's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the god of God.

In pride, in reasoning 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 the Eternal Cause.

TRUE HAPPINESS

(From An Essay on Man, Epistle IV.)

KNOW then this truth (enough for man to know) 'Virtue alone is happiness below.'

The only point where human bliss stands still,
And tastes the good without the fall to ill;
Where only merit constant pay receives,

Is blessed in what it takes, and what it gives;
The joy unequalled, if its end it gain,

And if it lose, attended with no pain:

Without satiety, though e'er so blessed,

And but more relished as the more distressed:
The broadest mirth unfeeling folly wears,

Less pleasing far than virtue's very tears:
Good, from each object, from each place acquired,
For ever exercised, yet never tired;

Never elated, while one man's oppressed;
Never dejected, while another's blessed;
And where no wants, no wishes can remain,
Since but to wish more virtue, is to gain.

See the sole bliss Heaven could on all bestow;
Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know:
Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind,
The bad must miss, the good, untaught, will find;
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature, up to Nature's God:
Pursues that chain which links the immense design,
Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine;
Sees, that no being any bliss can know,
But touches some above, and some below;
Learns, from this union of the rising whole,
The first, last purpose of the human soul;
And knows where faith, law, morals, all began,
All end, in Love of God, and Love of Man.

For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal,
And opens still, and opens on his soul;
Till lengthened on to faith, and unconfined,
It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind.
He sees why Nature plants in man alone

Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown:
(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind

Are given in vain, but what they seek they find;)
Wise is her present; she connects in this
His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss;
At once his own bright prospect to be blessed,
And strongest motive to assist the rest.

POPE AND HIS PARENTS

(From Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot)

Or gentle blood (part shed in Honour's cause,

While yet in Britain Honour had applause)

Each parent sprung-A. What fortune, pray?—P. Their

own,

And better got, than Bestia's1 from the throne.

Born to no Pride, inheriting no Strife,

Nor marrying Discord in a noble wife,2
Stranger to civil and religious rage,

The good man walk'd innoxious thro' his age.
Nor Courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dar'd an Oath, nor hazarded a Lie.3
Un-learn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language, but the language of the heart.
By Nature honest, by Experience wise,
Healthy by temp'rance, and by exercise;
His life, tho' long, to sickness past unknown,
His death was instant, and without a groan.
O grant me, thus to live, and thus to die!
Who sprung from King's 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,

With lenient arts extend a Mother's breath,

Make Langour smile, and smooth the bed of Death,

A Roman proconsul who in the war with Jugurtha was disgraced

for bribery. The reference seems to be to Marlborough.

In reference to Addison's marriage with the Countess of Warwick. 3 Pope's father was a Nonjuror.