'Twas all the ambition his high soul could feel,
To wear red stockings, and to dine with Steele.
Some ends of verse his betters might afford;
And gave the harmless fellow a good word.
Set up with these, he ventured on the town,
And with a borrow'd play outdid poor Crown.
There he stopp'd short, nor since has writ a tittle,
But has the wit to make the most of little:

Like stunted hide-bound trees, that just have got
Sufficient sap at once to bear and rot.

Now he begs verse, and what he gets commends,
Not of the wits his foes, but fools his friends.

So some coarse country-wench, almost decay'd, Trudges to town, and first turns chambermaid; Awkward and supple, each devoir to pay, She flatters her good lady twice a-day; Thought wondrous honest, though of mean degree, And strangely liked for her simplicity: In a translated suit, then tries the town, With borrow'd pins, and patches not her own: But just endured the winter she began, And in four months a batter'd harridan. Now nothing left, but wither'd, pale, and shrunk, To bawd for others, and go shares with punk.

TO MR. JOHN MOORE,

Author of the celebrated Worm-Powder.
How much, egregious Moore, are we
Deceived by shows and forms!
Whate'er we think, whate'er we see,
All human kind are worms.
Man is a very worm by birth,

Vile, reptile, weak, and vain!
A while he crawls upon the earth,
Then shrinks to earth again.

That woman is a worm, we find

E'er since our grandame's evil;

She first conversed with her own kind,
That ancient worm, the devil.

The learn'd themselves we book-worms name;
The blockhead is a slow-worm;
The nymph whose tail is all on flame,
Is aptly term'd a glow-worm.

The fops are painted butterflies,
That flutter for a day;

First from a worm they take their rise,

And in a worm decay.

The flatterer an earwig grows;

Thus worms suit all conditions:
Misers are muck-worms, silk-worms beaus.
And death-watches physicians.

That statesmen have the worm, is seen
By all their winding play;
Their conscience is a worm within,

That gnaws them night and day.

Ah, Moore! thy skill were well employ'd,
And greater gain would rise,

If thou couldst make the courtier void
The worm that never dies.
O learned friend of Abchurch-lane,
Who setst our entrails free;
Vain is thy art, thy powder vain,
Since worms shall eat e'en thee.

Our fate thou only canst adjourn

Some few short years, no more! E'en Button's wits to worms shall turn, Who maggots were before.

SONG BY A PERSON OF QUALITY.
Written in the Year 1733.
FLUTTERING spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart;
I a slave in thy dominions;
Nature must give way to art.
Mild Arcadians, ever blooming,
Nightly nodding o'er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming,

All beneath yon flowery rocks.
Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping,

Mourn'd Adonis, darling youth;
Him the boar, in silence creeping,
Gored with unrelenting tooth.
Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers;
Fair discretion, string the lyre;
Soothe my ever-waking slumbers:
Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.
Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,

Arm'd in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors,
Watering soft Elysian plains.
Mournful cypress, verdant willow,
Gilding my Aurelia's brows,
Morpheus hovering o'er my pillow,
Hear me pay my dying vows.
Melancholy smooth Meander,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin lovers wander,
With thy flowery chaplets crown'd.
Thus when Philomela drooping,
Softly seeks her silent mate,
See the bird of Juno stooping:
Melody resigns to fate.

ON A CERTAIN LADY AT COURT.

I KNOW the thing that's most uncommon; (Envy, be silent and attend!)

I know a reasonable woman,

Handsome and witty, yet a friend.

Not warp'd by passion, awed by rumour,

Not grave through pride, nor gay through folly. An equal mixture of good-humour,

And sensible soft melancholy.

Has she no faults, then,' Envy says, ' sir?'
Yes, she has one, I must aver:
When all the world conspires to praise her,
The woman's deaf, and does not hear.

ON HIS GROTTO AT TWICKENHAM, Composed of Marble, Spars, Gems, Ores, and Minerals.

Where lingering drops from mineral roofs distil,
And pointed crystals break the sparkling rill,
Unpolish'd gems no ray on pride bestow,
And latent metals innocently glow:
Approach. Great Nature studiously behold!
And eye the mine, without a wish for gold.
Approach; but awful! lo! the Ægerian grot,
Where, nobly pensive, St. John sat and thought;
Where British sighs from dying Wyndham stole,
And the bright flame was shot through Marchmont's
Let such, such only, tread this sacred floor.
Who dare to love their country, and the poor.

[soul.

TO MRS. M. B. ON HER BIRTH-DAY.
Он, be thou bless'd with all that Heaven can send,
Long health, long youth, long pleasure, and a friend!
Not with those toys the female world admire,
Riches that vex, and vanities that tire.
With added years, if life bring nothing new,
But like a sieve let every blessing through,
Some joy still lost, as each vain year runs o'er,
And all we gain, some sad reflection more;
Is that a birth day? 'tis, alas! too clear,
"Tis but the funeral of the former year.

Let joy or ease, let affluence or content,
And the gay conscience of a life well spent,
Calm every thought, inspirit every grace,
Glow in thy heart, and smile upon thy face.
Let day improve on day, and year on year,
Without a pain, a trouble, or a fear;
Till death unfelt that tender frame destroy,
In some soft dream, or ecstacy of joy.
Peaceful sleep out the sabbath of the tomb,
And wake to raptures in a life to come.

TO MR. THOMAS SOUTHERN,
On his Birth-day, 1742.

RESIGN'D to live, prepared to die,
With not one sim but poetry,
This day Tom's fair account has run
(Without a blot) to eighty-one.
Kind Boyle, before his poet, lays
A table, with a cloth of bays;
And Ireland, mother of sweet singers,
Presents her harp still to his fingers.
The feast, his towering genius marks
In yonder wild-goose and the larks!
The mushrooms show his wit was sudden!
And for his judgment, lo a pudden !
Roast beef, though old, proclaims him stout,
And grace, although a bard, devout.
May Tom, whom heaven sent down to raise
The price of prologues and of plays,
Be every birth-day more a winner,
Dijest his thirty thousandth dinner;
Walk to his grave without reproach,
And scorn a rascal and a coach.

TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE.*

IN beauty or wit,

No mortal as yet,

To question your empire has dared,

*This panegyric on Lady Mary Wortley Montague might have bean suppressed by Mr. Pope, on account of

SAY,† St. John, who alone peruse
With candid eye, the mimic muse,
What schemes of politics, or laws,
In Gallic lands the patriot draws!
Is then a greater work in hand,
Than all the tomes of Haine's band?
'Or shoots he folly as it flies?
Or catches manners as they rise?'t
Or, urged by unquench'd native heat,
Does St. John Greenwich sports repeat?
Where (emulous of Chartres' fame)
E'en Chartres' self is scarce a name.

To you (the all-envied gift of heaven)
The indulgent gods, unask'd, have given
A form complete in every part,
And, to enjoy that gift, the art.

her having satirized him in her verses to the imitator of Horace; which abuse he returned in the first satire of the second book of Horace.

From furious Sappho, scarce a milder fate, P-'d by her love, or libell'd by her hate. *This satire on Lord Bolingbroke, and the praise bestowed on him in a letter to Mr. Richardson, where Mr. Pope says,

The sons shall blush their fathers were his foes: being so contradictory, probably occasioned the former to be suppressed. S..

† Ad Albium Tibullum. Albi, nostrorum sermonum, candide judex, Quid nunc te dicam facere in regione Pedana? Scribere, quod Cassi Parmensis opuscula vincat? The lines here quoted occur in the Essay on Man. § An tacitum silvas inter reptare salubres? Di tibi formam Di tibi divitas dederunt, artemque fruendi.

*What could a tender mother's care
Wish better to her favourite heir,
Than wit, and fame, and lucky hours,
A stock of health, and golden showers,
And graceful fluency of speech,
Precepts before unknown to teach?
+ Amidst thy various ebbs of fear,
And gleaming hope, and black despair;
Yet let thy friend this truth impart ;
A truth I tell with bleeding heart
(In justice for your labours past,)
That every day shall be your last;
That every hour you life renew
Is to your injured country due.
In spite of tears, of mercy spite,
My genius still must rail, and write.
Haste to thy Twickenham's safe retreat,
And mingle with the grumbling great:
There, half devour'd by spleen, you'll find
The rhyming bubbler of mankind;
There (objects of our mutual hate)
We'll ridicule both church and state.

EPIGRAM ON MRS. TOFTS,

A handsome Woman with a fine Voice, but very covetous and proud.

So bright is thy beauty, so charming thy song,
As had drawn both the beasts and their Orpheus along;
But such is thy avarice and such is thy pride,
That the beasts must have starved, and the poet
have died.

EPIGRAM,

On one who made long Epitaphs. FRIEND, for your epitaphs I'm grieved; Where still so much is said,

One half will never be believed,
The other never read.

TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER,

On his painting for me the Statues of Apollo,
Venus, and Hercules.

WHAT god, what genius, did the pencil move
When Kneller painted these?

'Twas Friendship-warm as Phoebus, kind as Love, And strong as Hercules.

Quid voveat dulci nutricula majus alumno,
Qui sapere, et fari possit quæ sentiat, et cui
Gratia, fama, valetudo contingat abunde,
non deficiente crumena?

↑ Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras.
Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum.
Me pinguem et nitidum bene curatâ cute vises,
Cum ridere voles Epicuri de grege porcum.

A FAREWELL TO LONDON.
In the Year 1715.

DEAR, damn'd distracting town, farewell!
Thy fools no more I'll tease:
This year in peace, ye critics, dwell,

Ye harlots, sleep at ease.

Soft B*** and rough C*****, adieu!
Earl Warwick make your moan,
The lively H*****k and you

May knock up whores alone.
To drink and droll be Rowe allow'd
Till the third watchman toll;
Let Jervis gratis paint, and Frowde
Save three-pence and his soul.
Farewell Arbuthnot's raillery

On every learned sot,

And Garth, the best good christian he,
Although he knows it not.

Lintot, farewell; thy bard must go!
Farewell, unhappy Tonson!
Heaven gives thee, for thy loss of Rowe,
Lean Philips, and fat Johnson.

Why should I stay? Both parties rage;
My vixen mistress squalls;
The wits in envious feuds engage;

And Homer (damn him!) calls.

The love of arts lies cold and dead
In Halifax's urn;

And not one Muse of all he fed,

Has yet the grace to mourn.

My friends, by turns, my friends confound,
Betray, and are betray'd:

Poor Y***r's sold for fifty pound,
And B******11 is a jade.

Why make I friendships with the great,
When I no favour seek?

Or follow girls seven hours in eight?

I need but once a week.

Still idle, with a busy air,

Deep whimsies to contrive; The gayest valetudinaire,

Most thinking rake alive. Solicitous for others' ends,

Though fond of dear repose;
Careless or drowsy with my friends,
And frolic with my foes.

Luxurious lobster-nights, farewell,
For sober, studious days!
And Burlington's delicious meal,
For salads, tarts, and pease!

Adieu to all but Gay alone,

Whose soul sincere and free, Loves all mankind, but flatters none, And so may starve with me.

A DIALOGUE.

SINCE my old friend is grown so great
As to be minister of state.
I'm told (but 'tis not true I hope)
That Craggs will be ashamed of Pope.

Craggs. Alas! if I am such a creature.

To grow the worse for growing greater,
Why, faith, in spite of all my brags,
"Tis Pope must be ashamed of Craggs.

EPIGRAM,

Engraved on the Collar of a Dog, which I gave to his
Royal Highness

I AM his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

EPIGRAM,

Occasioned by an Invitation to Court.

IN the lines that you sent are the muses and graces: You've the nine in your wit, and the three in your faces.

ON AN OLD GATE.

Erected in Chiswick Gardens.

O GATE, how camest thou here?

Gate. I was brought from Chelsea last year,
Batter'd with wind and weather;
Inigo Jones put me together;

Sir Hans Sloane

Let me alone:

Burlington brought me hither. 1742.

A FRAGMENT.

WHAT are the falling rills, the pendent shades, The morning bowers, the evening colonnades, But soft recesses for the uneasy mind To sigh unheard in, to the passing wind! So the struck deer, in some sequester'd part, Lies down to die (the arrow in his heart;) There hid in shades, and wasting day by day, Inly he bleeds, and pants his soul away.

VERSES LEFT BY MR. POPE, On his lying in the same Bed which Wilmot the celebrated Earl of Rochester slept in, at Adderbury, then belonging to the Duke of Argyle, July 9th,

1739.

WITH no poetic ardour fired

I press'd the bed where Wilmot lay; That here he loved, or here expired, Begets no numbers grave or gay. But in thy roof, Argyle, are bred Such thoughts as prompt the brave to lie Stretch'd out in honour's noble bed, Beneath a nobler roof-the sky. Such flames as high in patriots burn, Yet stoop to bless a child or wife; And such as wicked kings may mourn, When freedom is more dear than life.

VERSES TO MR. C.

St. James's Place, London, October 22. FEW words are best; I wish you well; Bethel, I'm told, will soon be here: Some morning-walks along the Mall, And evening friends, will end the year. If, in this interval, between

The falling leaf and coming frost, You please to see, on Twit'nam green, Your friend, your poet, and your host; For three whole days you here may rest, From office, business, news, and strife; And (what most folks would think a jest) Want nothing else, except your wife.

EPITAPHS.

His saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani Munere! VIRG.

ON CHARLES EARL OF DORSET,

In the Church of Withyam, in Sussex. DORSET, the grace of courts, the Muses pride, Patron of arts, and judge of nature, died. The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great, Of fops in learning, and of knaves in state: Yet soft his nature, though severe his lay; His anger moral, and his wisdom gay. Bless'd satirist! who touch'd the means so true, As show'd vice had his hate and pity too. Bless'd courtier! who could king and country please Yet sacred keep his friendships, and his ease. Bless'd peer! his great forefathers' every grace Reflecting, and reflected in his race; Where other Buckhursts, other Dorsets shine, And patrons still, or poets, deck the line.

ON SIR WILLIAM TRUMBALL, One of the principal Secretaries of State to King William the Third, who, having resigned kis place, died in his Retirement at Easthamstead, in Berk shire, 1716.

A PLEASING form; a firm, yet cautious mind; Sincere, though prudent; constant, yet resign'd; Honour unchanged, a principle profess'd, Fix'd to one side, but moderate to the rest : An honest courtier, yet a patriot too; Just to his prince, and to his country true: Fill'd with the sense of age, the fire of youth, A scorn of wrangling, yet a zeal for truth: A generous faith, from superstition free; A love to peace, and hate of tyranny: Such this man was; who now from earth removed, At length enjoys that liberty he loved.

ON THE HON. SIMON HARCOURT, Only Son of the Lord Chancellor Harcourt, at the Church of Stanton-Harcourt, in Oxfordshire, 1720 To this sad shrine, whoe'er thou art, draw near; Here lies the friend most loved, the son most dear;

Who ne'er knew joy but friendship might divide, Or gave his father grief but when he died.

How vain is reason, eloquence how weak! If Pope must tell what Harcourt cannot speak. Oh let thy once-loved friend inscribe thy stone, And with a father's sorrows mix his own!

ON JAMES CRAGGS, ESQ. In Westminster Abbey.

JACOBUS CRAGGS,

REGI MAGNE BRITANNIE A SECRETIS, ET CONSILIIS SANCTIORIBUS, PRINCIPIS PARITER AC POPULI AMOR ET DELICIE

VIXIT, TITULIS ET INVIDIA MAJOR,
ANNOS, HEU PAUCOS, XXXV.

OB. FEB. XVI. MDCCXX.

STATESMAN, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honour clear!

Who broke no promise, served no private end,
Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend;
Ennobled by himself, by all approved,
Praised, wept, and honour'd, by the muse he loved.

Who died of a Cancer in her Breast. HERE rests a woman, good without pretence, Bless'd with plain reason, and with sober sense; No conquest she, but o'er herself, desired, No arts essay'd, but not to be admired. Passion and pride were to her soul unknown, Convinced that virtue only is our own. So unaffected, so composed a mind; So firm, yet soft; so strong, yet so refined; Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried; The saint sustain'd it, but the woman died.

ON THE MONUMENT OF THE
HONOURABLE ROBERT DIGBY,

AND OF HIS SISTER MARY,

Erected by their Father, the Lord Digby, in the Church of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, 1727.

Go! fair example of untainted youth,
Of modest wisdom, and pacific truth;
Composed in sufferings, and in joy sedate,

Good without noise, without pretensions great:

Just of thy word, in every thought sincere,
Who knew no wish but what the world might hear:
Of softest manners, unaffected mind,
Lover of peace, and friend of human-kind :
Go, live! for heaven's eternal year is thine,
Go, and exalt thy moral to divine!

And thou, bless'd maid! attendant on his doom,
Pensive hast follow'd to the silent tomb,
Steer'd the same course to the same quiet shore,
Not parted long, and now to part no more!
Go then, where only bliss sincere is known!
Go, where to love and to enjoy are one!

Yet, take these tears, mortality's relief,
And till we share your joys, forgive our grief:
These little rites, a stone, a verse, receive;
'Tis all a father, all a friend, can give !

ON SIR GODFREY KNELLER,

In Westminster Abbey, 1723. KNELLER, by Heaven, and not a master, taught, Whose art was nature, and whose pictures thought; Now for two ages having snatch'd from fate Whate'er was beauteous, or whate'er was great, Lies crown'd with princes' honours, poets' lays, Due to his merit, and brave thirst of praise.

Living, great nature fear'd he might outvie Her works; and, dying, fears herself may die.

ON GENERAL HENRY WITHERS,
In Westminster Abbey, 1729.

HERE, Withers, rest! thou bravest, gentlest mind,
Thy country's friend, but more of human-kind.
O born to arms! O worth in youth approved!
O soft humanity, in age beloved!
For thee the hardy veteran drops a tear,
And the gay courtier feels the sigh sincere.
Withers, adieu! yet not with thee remove
Thy martial spirit, or thy social love!
Amidst corruption, luxury, and rage,
Still leave some ancient virtues to our age:
Nor let us say (those English glories gone)
The last true Briton lies beneath this stone.

ON MR. ELIJAH FENTON,

At Easthamstead, in Berks, 1730.

THIS modest stone, what few vain marbles can, May truly say, 'Here lies an honest man :'

A poet, bless'd beyond the poet's fate,

Whom Heaven kept sacred from the proud and great
Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease,
Content with science in the vale of peace.
Calmly he look'd on either life, and here
Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear;
From nature's temperate feast rose satisfied,
Thank'd Heaven that he had lived, and that he died.

ON MR. GAY,

In Westminster Abbey, 1730.

Of manners gentle, of affections mild;

In wit, a man; simplicity, a child.