Literature and Words

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.

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.

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many wiles.

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

True wit is nature to advantage dress’d, What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go. To make a third, she joined the former two.

O gracious God! how far have we Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!

Wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretense, But Shadwell 5 never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell’s genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day.

And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

Ah yet, ere I descend to the grave May I a small house and large garden have; And a few friends, and many books, both true, Both wise, and both delightful too!