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What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me! But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines!

Alexander Pope

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Alexander Pope
Age: 56 †
Born: 1688
Born: May 21
Died: 1744
Died: May 30
Literary Historian
Poet
Translator
the City
Pope the Poet
Alexander I Pope
Alexander
I Pope
Lord
Woeful
Happiness
Hackney
Happy
Refines
Stuff
Brightens
Would
Starved
Wit
Style
Lines

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To the Elysian shades dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.
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Sure of their qualities and demanding praise, more go to ruined fortunes than are raised.
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Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee, From Thee to nothing.
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They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.
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The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read With loads of learned lumber in his head.
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Some have at first for wits, then poets passed, Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last.
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Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!
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Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.
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True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd Something whose truth convinced at sight we find, That gives us back the image of our mind. As shades more sweetly recommend the light, So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.
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Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, Yet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust.
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On cold December fragrant chaplets blow, And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.
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Content if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view, The learn'd reflect on what before they knew.
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The laughers are a majority.
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Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
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By music minds an equal temper know, Nor swell too high, nor sink too low. . . . . Warriors she fires with animated sounds. Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds.
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Tis thus the mercury of man is fix'd, Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix'd.
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The proper study of Mankind is Man.
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The race by vigour, not by vaunts, is won.
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Is there a parson much bemused in beer, a maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, a clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross, who pens a stanza when he should engross?
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All nature is but art unknown to thee.
Alexander Pope