Others

Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

With these [Love, Patience, Faith] celestial Wisdom calms the mind, And makes the happiness she does not find.

Declamation roar’d, while Passion slept.

Cold approbation gave the ling’ring bays, For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise.

When learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose; Each change of many-color’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil’d after him in vain.

When learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose; Each change of many-color’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil’d after him in vain.

When learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose; Each change of many-color’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil’d after him in vain.

If you would not be forgotten, As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worthy reading, Or do things worth the writing.

Whoever you are, behold your master, He is, or was, or has to be. 13

Stuff the head With all such reading as was never read: For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, Goddess, and about it.

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

Whether thou choose Cervantes’ serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais’ easy chair.

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.

We poets are (upon a poet’s word) Of all mankind the creatures most absurd: The season when to come, and when to go, To sing, or cease to sing, we never know.

Vain was the chief’s, the sage’s pride! They had no poet, and they died. 7

There still remains, to mortify a wit, The many-headed monster of the pit.

Ev’n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, The last and greatest art—the art to blot.

Ev’n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, The last and greatest art—the art to blot.

The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.

One simile that solitary shines In the dry desert of a thousand lines.

In quibbles angel and archangel join, And God the Father turns a school-divine.

There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl The feast of reason and the flow of soul.

Means not, but blunders round about a meaning; And he whose fustian’s so sublimely bad, It is not poetry, but prose run mad.

As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp’d in numbers, for the numbers came.