The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope: With a Life, Volume 2

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Little, Brown, 1859
 

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Page 3 - To tire our patience, than mislead our sense. Some few in that, but numbers err in this, Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss; A fool might once himself alone expose, Now one in verse makes many more in prose. Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Page 48 - Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, A Being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, 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...
Page 86 - Let not this weak, unknowing hand Presume thy bolts to throw, And deal damnation round the land On each I judge Thy foe. If I am right, Thy grace impart Still in the right to stay ; If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart To find that better way!
Page 69 - For modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight ; His can't be wrong whose life is in the right...
Page 6 - First follow Nature, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same: Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, One clear, unchanged, and universal light, Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart, At once the source, and end, and test of Art. Art from that fund each just supply provides; Works without show, and without pomp presides: In some fair body thus th...
Page 49 - Two principles in human nature reign, Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain ; Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call ; Each works its end, to move or govern all ; And to their proper operation still Ascribe all good, to their improper — ilL Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul ; Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Page 135 - You show us Rome was glorious, not profuse, And pompous buildings once were things of use; Yet shall, my lord, your just, your noble rules, Fill half the land with imitating fools ; Who random drawings from your sheets shall take; And of one beauty many blunders make...
Page 46 - Cease then, nor order imperfection name : Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Know thy own point : This kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.
Page 17 - whispers through the trees': If crystal streams 'with pleasing murmurs creep,' The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with
Page 61 - One in their nature, which are two in ours ; And reason raise o'er instinct as you can, In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis Man.

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