Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Popewas an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his satirical verse, as well as for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth21 May 1688
son feet paper
Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone, A Page, a Grave, that they can call their own; But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick, On passive paper, or on solid brick.
laughter ambition son
Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise. By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies? Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
wise father son
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so.
song long sacred
But touch me, and no minister so sore. Whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme, Sacred to ridicule his whole life long, And the sad burthen of some merry song.
song children
What will a child learn sooner than a song?
song children men
Of little use, the man you may suppose, Who says in verse what others say in prose; Yet let me show a poet's of some weight, And (though no soldier) useful to the state, What will a child learn sooner than a song? What better teach a foreigner the tongue? What's long or short, each accent where to place And speak in public with some sort of grace?
song snakes lasts
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.
draw peculiar plan
Fix'd like a plan on his peculiar spot, to draw nutrition, propagate, and rot.
last lay
Be not the first by which a new thing is tried, or the last to lay the old aside.
blessed expects man ninth shall
Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed" was the ninth beatitude
fault hide mercy teach
Teach me to feel another's woe. To hide the fault I see: That the mercy I show to others; that mercy also show to me.
english-poet fault hide mercy others teach
Teach me to feel another's woe,To hide the fault I see,That mercy I to others show,That mercy show to me.
censure ten writers-and-writing writes
Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss.
catch flying last lips suck
See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,/ Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul!