Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU - The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope

Return to Title Page for The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Literature

TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU - 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).

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU

While there is no absolute date to be given for this or the following poem, both evidently belong to the period of Pope’s somewhat fanciful attachment for Lady Mary.

    • I

    • In beauty, or wit,
    • No mortal as yet
    • To question your empire has dar’d;
    • But men of discerning
    • Have thought that in learning,
    • To yield to a lady was hard.
    • II

    • Impertinent schools,
    • With musty dull rules,
    • Have reading to females denied:
    • So Papists refuse
    • The Bible to use,
    • Lest flocks should be wise as their guide.
    • III

    • ’T was a woman at first,
    • (Indeed she was curst)
    • In Knowledge that tasted delight,
    • And sages agree
    • The laws should decree
    • To the first possessor the right.
    • IV

    • Then bravely, fair Dame,
    • Resume the old claim,
    • Which to your whole sex does belong;
    • And let men receive,
    • From a second bright Eve,
    • The knowledge of right and of wrong.
    • V

    • But if the first Eve
    • Hard doom did receive,
    • When only one apple had she,
    • What a punishment new
    • Shall be found out for you,
    • Who tasting have robb’d the whole tree?