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And hail with music its propitious ray. 1[This the blest lover shall for Venus take, 135 And send up vows from Rosamonda's lake.2] This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,

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When next he looks through Galileo's eyes; 4 And hence th' egregious wizard shall foredoom

The fate of Louis and the fall of Rome. 140 Then cease, bright nymph! to mourn thy ravished hair,

Which adds new glory to the shining sphere!
Not all the tresses that fair head can boast,
Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost.
For, after all the murders of your eye,
When, after millions slain, yourself shall die;
When those fair suns shall set, as set they
must,

145

And all those tresses shall be laid in dust: 148 This lock, the Muse shall consecrate to fame, And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name.

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Shrines where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep,

And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!

Though cold like you, unmoved and silent grown,

I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not Heaven's while Abelard has part,25
Still rebel nature holds out half my heart;
Nor prayers nor fasts its stubborn pulse re-
strain,

Nor tears, for ages taught to flow in vain.

Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose, That well-known name awakens all my woes. Oh, name forever sad! forever dear! 31 Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a

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There died the best of passions, love and fame.
Yet write, oh! write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.
Nor foes nor fortune take this power away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not
spare,
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Love but demands what else were shed in
prayer;

No happier task these faded eyes pursue;
To read and weep is all they now can do.

Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief; Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief. Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's

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ALEXANDER POPE

When love approached me under friendship's

name;

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My fancy formed thee of angelic kind,
Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind.
Those smiling eyes, attempering every ray,
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day.
Guiltless I gazed; Heaven listened while you
sung;

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And truths divine came mended1 from that tongue.

From lips like those what precept failed to
move?

Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love;
Back through the paths of pleasing sense I

ran,

Nor wished an angel whom I loved a man. 70
Dim and remote the joys of saints I see;
Nor envy them that Heaven I lose for thee.

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away,

Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature
free

All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.
O curs'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night!
How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight! 230
Provoking demons all restraint remove,
And stir within me every source of love.
I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy
charms,

improved 2 Quoted from Crashaw.

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Sudden you mount, you beckon from the
skies;

Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise.
I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find,
And wake to all the griefs I left behind.

FROM AN ESSAY ON MAN
BOOK I

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;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous
shoot;

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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;

But vindicate the ways of God to man.

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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?
Through worlds unnumbered though the
God be known,

'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied being peoples every star,

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May tell why Heaven 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 Looked through? 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,

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Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why formed 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 above,
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove.
Of systems possible, if 'tis confessed
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 reasoning life, 'tis plain,
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as

man:

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And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)
Is only this, if God has placed him wrong? 50
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.

In human works, though laboured 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.

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From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:

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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, 85
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. 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 confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored 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 given,
Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler
Heaven;

102

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How instinct varies in the grovelling swine, Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine!

'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier, Forever separate, yet forever near ! Remembrance and reflection how allied; 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 powers of all subdued by thee alone,
Is not thy reason all these powers in one?

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul; That, changed through all, and yet in all the

same;

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Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 271
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all life, extends through all ex-
tent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,.
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; 276
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph 3 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:

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P. Shut, shut the door, good John!1 fatigued,
I said?

Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.
The Dog-star rages! nay, 'tis past a doubt,
All Bedlam,2 or Parnassus,3 is let out:
Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, 5
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.
What walls can guard me, or what shades
can hide?

They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide;

By land, by water, they renew the charge, They stop the chariot, and they board the

barge.

ΙΟ

No place is sacred, not the church is free; E'en Sunday shines no Sabbath day to me: Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme,

Happy to catch me just at dinner-time.

Is there a parson, much bemused in beer,15 A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,

A clerk, foredoomed his father's soul to cross, Who pens a stanza, when he should engross? Is there, who, locked from ink and paper, scrawls

With desperate charcoal round his darkened walls?

All fly to Twit'nam 5 and in humble strain 21 Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain. Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws, Imputes to me and my damn'd works the

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If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kissed the rod. Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence, And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense. Commas and points they set exactly right, 161 And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite; Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds,

From slashing Bentley down to piddling Tibbalds.

Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells, 165

Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables, E'en such small critics some regard may claim, Preserved in Milton's or in Shakespeare's

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