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Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

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
Break
Upon
Satirist
Sense
Satire
Feel
Wheel
Feels
Alas
Butterfly
Breaks
Wheels

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Nor Fame I slight, nor her favors call.
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Good-nature and good-sense must ever join To err is human, to forgive, divine.
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In death a hero, as in life a friend!
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Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.
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Ah! what avails it me the flocks to keep, Who lost my heart while I preserv'd my sheep.
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See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep, And all the western world believe and sleep.
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Horses (thou say'st) and asses men may try, And ring suspected vessels ere they buy But wives, a random choice, untried they take They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake Then, nor till then, the veil's removed away, And all the woman glares in open day.
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Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great... He hangs between in doubt to act or rest In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast In doubt his mind or body to prefer Born to die, and reasoning but to err.
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Our plenteous streams a various race supply, The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye, The silver eel, in shining volumes roll'd, The yellow carp, in scales bedropp'd with gold, Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains, And pikes, the tyrants of the wat'ry plains.
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When we are young, we are slavishly employed in procuring something whereby we may live comfortably when we grow old and when we are old, we perceive it is too late to live as we proposed.
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Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.
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Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
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One self-approving hour whole years outweighs.
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In a sadly pleasing strain, let the warbling lute complain.
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A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, And greatly falling with a falling state.
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Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad.
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The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712) -Vital spark of heav'nly flame! Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying! Stanza 1.
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The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd
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Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
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Pretty! in amber to observe the forms Of hairs, of straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms! The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there.
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