Though each may feel increases and decays, And see now clearer and now darker days. Regard not then if wit be old or new, 406 But blame the false, and value still the

true.

Some ne'er advance a judgment of their

own,

But catch the spreading notion of the town; They reason and conclude by precedent, 410 And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then

Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the

men.

Of all this servile herd the worst is he That in proud dullness joins with quality. 415 A constant critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord. What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me? But let a lord once own the happy lines, 420 How the wit brightens; how the style refines!

Before his sacred name flies every fault, And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

The vulgar thus through imitation err; As oft the learned by being singular; 425 So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng

By chance go right, they purposely go

Zoilus again would start up from the dead
Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue;
But like a shadow, proves the substanc
true;

For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, make known

The opposing body's grossness, not its own When first that sun too powerful beam

It draws up vapors which obscure its rays But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way Reflect new glories, and augment the day. Be thou the first true merit to defend, His praise is lost, who stays till all com mend.

47

Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes And 'tis but just to let them live betimes. No longer now that golden age appears, When patriarch-wits survived a thousand

years:

Now length of fame (our second life) i lost, 48 And bare threescore is all ev'n that car boast;

Our sons their fathers' failing languag

see,

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK

CANTO I

What dire offense from amorous causes springs,

What mighty contests rise from trivial things,

I sing -This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due: This, even Belinda may vouchsafe to view: Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, If she inspire, and he approve my lays.

Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel

A well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle? Oh, say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,

Could make a gentle belle reject a lord? 10 In tasks so bold, can little men engage, And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage?

Sol through white curtains shot a timorous ray,

And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day:

Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake,

15

Nor bound thy narrow views to things below.

Some secret truths, from learned pride concealed,

To maids alone and children are revealed: What though no credit doubting wits may give?

The fair and innocent shall still believe. 40 Know, then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly,

The light militia of the lower sky:

These, though unseen, are ever on the wing, Hang o'er the box, and hover round the Ring,

Think what an equipage thou hast in air, 45 And view with scorn two pages and a chair. As now your own, our beings were of old, And once enclosed in woman's beauteous mould;

50

Thence, by a soft transition, we repair
From earthly vehicles to these of air.
Think not, when woman's transient breath
is fled,

That all her vanities at once are dead;
Succeeding vanities she still regards,
And though she plays no more, o'erlooks
the cards.

Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive, 55
And love of ombre, after death survive.
For when the fair in all their pride expire,
To their first elements their souls retire:
The sprites of fiery termagants in flame
Mount up, and take a salamander's name.
Soft yielding minds to water glide away, 61
And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea.
The graver prude sinks downward to a
gnome,

In search of mischief still on earth to roam. The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair, 65 And sport and flutter in the fields of air.

'Know further yet; whoever fair and chaste

Rejects mankind, is by some sylph embraced:

For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with

Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light. Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew, Dipt in the richest tincture of the skies, 65 Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes, While every beam new transient colors flings,

Colors that change whene'er they wave their wings.

Amid the circle, on the gilded mast,

Superior by the head, was Ariel placed; 70 His purple pinions opening to the sun, He raised his azure wand, and thus begun. 'Ye sylphs and sylphids, to your chief give ear!

Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and demons, hear! Ye know the spheres, and various tasks assigned

75

By laws eternal to the aërial kind.
Some in the fields of purest ether play,
And bask and whiten in the blaze of day.
Some guide the course of wandering orbs
on high,

Or roll the planets through the boundless sky.

80

Some less refined, beneath the moon's pale light

Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night,

Or suck the mists in grosser air below,
Or dip their pinions in the painted bow,
Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main,
Or o'er the glebe distil the kindly rain. 86
Others on earth o'er human race preside,
Watch all their ways, and all their actions
guide:

Of these the chief, the care of nations own,
And guard with arms divine the British

throne.

90