As when that hero, who, in each campaign,    Had braved the Goth, and many a Vandal slain,    Lay fortune-struck, a spectacle of woe!    Wept by each friend, forgiven…

    What are the falling rills, the pendant shades,    The morning bowers, the evening colonnades,    But soft recesses for th’ uneasy mind    To sigh unheard in, to the passing…

    O Wretched B—-,[90]jealous now of all,    What god, what mortal shall prevent thy fall?    Turn, turn thy eyes from wicked men in place,    And see what succour from…

   IN THE YEAR 1715.     1 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!…

    POPE.    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…

    Oh wind-swept towers,    Oh endlessly blossoming trees,    White clouds and lucid eyes,    And pools in the rocks whose unplumbed blue is pregnant    With who knows what of subtlety    And magical…

    Darkness had stretched its colour,    Deep blue across the pane:    No cloud to make night duller,    No moon with its tarnish stain;    But only here and there a star,    One…

    I had remarked–how sharply one observes    When life is disappearing round the curves    Of yet another corner, out of sight!–    I had remarked when it was “good luck”…

    Failing sometimes to understand    Why there are folk whose flesh should seem    Like carrion puffed with noisome steam,    Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it,    Fly-blown to the…

    My green aquarium of phantom fish,    Goggling in on me through the misty panes;    My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains;    My few clear quiet autumn days–I…