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TO MR. GAY WHO HAD CONGRATULATED POPE ON FINISHING HIS HOUSE AND GARDENS - 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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TO MR. GAY

WHO HAD CONGRATULATED POPE ON FINISHING HIS HOUSE AND GARDENS

Written early in 1722.

    • Ah, friend! ’t is true—this truth you lovers know—
    • In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow,
    • In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes
    • Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens;
    • Joy lives not here, to happier seats it flies,
    • And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes.
    • What are the gay Parterre, the chequer’d Shade,
    • The morning Bower, the ev’ning Colonnade,
    • But soft recesses of uneasy minds,
    • To sigh unheard in to the passing winds?
    • So the struck deer in some sequester’d part
    • Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart;
    • He stretch’d unseen in coverts hid from day,
    • Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away.