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TO MR. JOHN MOORE AUTHOR OF THE CELEBRATED WORM-POWDER - 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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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 MR. JOHN MOORE

AUTHOR OF THE CELEBRATED WORM-POWDER

    • How much, egregious Moore! are we
    • Deceiv’d by shows and forms!
    • Whate’er we think, whate’er we see,
    • All humankind are Worms.
    • Man is a very Worm by birth,
    • Vile reptile, weak, and vain!
    • A while he crawls upon the earth,
    • Then shrinks to earth again.
    • That woman is a Worm we find,
    • E’er since our Grandam’s evil:
    • She first convers’d with her own kind,
    • That ancient Worm, the Devil.
    • The learn’d themselves we Bookworms name,
    • The blockhead is a Slowworm;
    • The nymph whose tail is all on flame,
    • Is aptly term’d a Glowworm.
    • The fops are painted Butterflies,
    • That flutter for a day;
    • First from a Worm they take their rise,
    • And in a Worm decay.
    • The flatterer an Earwig grows;
    • Thus worms suit all conditions;
    • Misers are Muckworms; Silkworms, beaux;
    • And Deathwatches, physicians.
    • That statesmen have the worm, is seen
    • By all their winding play;
    • Their conscience is a Worm within,
    • That gnaws them night and day.
    • Ah, Moore, thy skill were well employ’d,
    • And greater gain would rise,
    • If thou couldst make the courtier void
    • The Worm that never dies!
    • O learned friend of Abchurch-Lane,
    • Who sett’st our entrails free,
    • Vain is thy Art, thy Powder vain,
    • Since Worms shall eat ev’n thee.
    • Our fate thou only canst adjourn
    • Some few short years, no more!
    • Ev’n Button’s Wits to Worms shall turn,
    • Who Maggots were before.