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EPISTLE TO MRS. BLOUNT, WITH THE WORKS OF VOITURE. - Alexander Pope, The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope [1903]

Edition used:

The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. Cambridge Edition, ed. Henry W. Boynton (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1903).

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EPISTLE TO MRS. BLOUNT, WITH THE WORKS OF VOITURE.

To Teresa Blount. First published in Lintot’s Miscellany, in 1712. See note.

    • In these gay thoughts the Loves and Graces shine,
    • And all the writer lives in ev’ry line;
    • His easy Art may happy Nature seem,
    • Trifles themselves are elegant in him.
    • Sure to charm all was his peculiar fate,
    • Who without flatt’ry pleas’d the Fair and Great;
    • Still with esteem no less convers’d than read,
    • With wit well-natured, and with books well-bred:
    • His heart his mistress and his friend did share,9
    • His time the Muse, the witty, and the fair.
    • Thus wisely careless, innocently gay,
    • Cheerful he play’d the trifle, Life, away;
    • Till Fate scarce felt his gentle breath supprest,
    • As smiling infants sport themselves to rest.
    • Ev’n rival Wits did Voiture’s death deplore,
    • And the gay mourn’d who never mourn’d before;
    • The truest hearts for Voiture heav’d with sighs,
    • Voiture was wept by all the brightest eyes:
    • The Smiles and Loves had died in Voiture’s death,19
    • But that for ever in his lines they breathe.
    • Let the strict life of graver mortals be
    • A long, exact, and serious Comedy;
    • In ev’ry scene some Moral let it teach,
    • And, if it can, at once both please and preach.
    • Let mine an innocent gay farce appear,
    • And more diverting still than regular,
    • Have Humour, Wit, a native Ease and Grace,
    • Tho’ not too strictly bound to Time and Place:
    • Critics in Wit, or Life, are hard to please,
    • Few write to those, and none can live to these.30
    • Too much your Sex is by their forms confin’d,
    • Severe to all, but most to Womankind;
    • Custom, grown blind with Age, must be your guide;
    • Your pleasure is a vice, but not your pride;
    • By Nature yielding, stubborn but for fame,
    • Made slaves by honour, and made fools by shame;
    • Marriage may all those petty tyrants chase;
    • But sets up one, a greater, in their place;
    • Well might you wish for change by those accurst,39
    • But the last tyrant ever proves the worst.
    • Still in constraint your suff’ring Sex remains,
    • Or bound in formal, or in real chains:
    • Whole years neglected, for some months ador’d,
    • The fawning Servant turns a haughty Lord.
    • Ah, quit not the free innocence of life,
    • For the dull glory of a virtuous Wife;
    • Nor let false shows, or empty titles please;
    • Aim not at Joy, but rest content with Ease.
    • The Gods, to curse Pamela with her pray’rs,
    • Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares,50
    • The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state,
    • And, to complete her bliss, a fool for mate.
    • She glares in Balls, front Boxes, and the Ring,
    • A vain, unquiet, glitt’ring, wretched thing!
    • Pride, Pomp, and State but reach her outward part;
    • She sighs, and is no Duchess at her heart.
    • But, Madam, if the fates withstand, and you
    • Are destin’d Hymen’s willing victim too;
    • Trust not too much your now resistless charms,
    • Those Age or Sickness soon or late disarms:60
    • Good humour only teaches charms to last,
    • Still makes new conquests, and maintains the past;
    • Love, rais’d on Beauty, will like that decay,
    • Our hearts may bear its slender chain a day;
    • As flow’ry bands in wantonness are worn,
    • A morning’s pleasure, and at evening torn;
    • This binds in ties more easy, yet more strong,
    • The willing heart, and only holds it long.
    • Thus Voiture’s early care still shone the same,69
    • And Montausier was only changed in name;
    • By this, ev’n now they live, ev’n now they charm,
    • Their wit still sparkling, and their flames still warm.
    • Now crown’d with myrtle, on th’ Elysian coast,
    • Amid those lovers, joys his gentle Ghost:
    • Pleas’d, while with smiles his happy lines you view,
    • And finds a fairer Rambouillet in you.
    • The brightest eyes of France inspired his Muse;
    • The brightest eyes of Britain now peruse;
    • And dead, as living, ’t is our Author’s pride
    • Still to charm those who charm the world beside.80