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THE LOOKING-GLASS ON MRS. PULTENEY - 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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THE LOOKING-GLASS

ON MRS. PULTENEY

Mrs. Pulteney was a daughter of one John Gumley, who had made a fortune by a glass manufactory.

  • With scornful mien, and various toss of air,
  • Fantastic, vain, and insolently fair,
  • Grandeur intoxicates her giddy brain,
  • She looks ambition, and she moves disdain.
  • Far other carriage graced her virgin life,
  • But charming Gumley’s lost in Pulteney’s wife.
  • Not greater arrogance in him we find,
  • And this conjunction swells at least her mind.
  • O could the sire, renown’d in glass, produce
  • One faithful mirror for his daughter’s use!
  • Wherein she might her haughty errors trace,
  • And by reflection learn to mend her face:
  • The wonted sweetness to her form restore,
  • Be what she was, and charm mankind once more.