ALEXANDER POPE’S EPIGRAMS
The English poet and satirist Alexander Pope was born in
London on 21 May 1688 and died at Twickenham, near London, on 30 May 30 1744.
He was physically very weak, but mentally very strong.
In his youth he read a lot. His selection included classical
writers - Homer, Tasso, Aristoto, Virgil and Ovid either in the original or in
translation.
In the modern writers, he read their poetry, criticism and
drama.
His
health was always bad. By middle life, his physical weakness was so constant that
he could not dress without aid.
According to the English writer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784),
his legs were so slender that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings,
which were drawn on and off by the maid.
Some of the famous literary works of Pope are: The Rape of
the Lock (1712, 1714), Essay on Man (1733), An Essay on Criticism (1711), The
Iliad of Homer translated (1715-1720) and The Odyssey of Homer translated (1725-1726).
Pope is universally famous for his epigrams (Short sayings said
in a clever and amusing way). Some critics have rightly said that no authors
except Shakespeare and Milton have given to the English language so many
quotable lines and phrases as Pope.
Pope’s neat couplets are said to be easy to remember, and his
comments on life and learning are usually brief, clever, and exact.
To conclude , here are some famous epigrams of Pope:
1.
Hope
springs eternal in the human heart;
Man never is but
always to be blest. (From Essay on Man).
2.
All
nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All, chance, direction, which thou cans not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever
is, is right. .
3.
Honor
and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the
honor lies.
4.
A
wit’s a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man is the noblest work of God.
5.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow drafts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
(Piera was the region where the Muses (In Greek mythology
nine goddesses who presided over the arts and science}. were first worshipped).
6.
True
ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
7. To err is human, to forgive divine.
8. For fools rush in where
angels fear to tread.
9. For forms of Government let fools contest,
Whate’er s best administered
is best.
10.’Tis Education forms the common mind:
Just as the twig is bent
the tree’s inclined.
Be
not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor
yet the last to lay the old aside.
*********
G. R. Kanwal
25 May 2025
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