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THE FIRST ODE OF THE FOURTH BOOK OF HORACE [ ] - 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 FIRST ODE OF THE FOURTH BOOK OF HORACE[ ]

TO VENUS

  • Again? new tumults in my breast?
  • Ah, spare me, Venus! let me, let me rest!
  • I am not now, alas! the man
  • As in the gentle reign of my Queen Anne.
  • Ah! sound no more thy soft alarms,
  • Nor circle sober fifty with thy charms.
  • Mother too fierce of dear desires!
  • Turn, turn to willing hearts your wanton fires:
  • To number five direct your doves,
  • There spread round Murray all your blooming Loves;10
  • Noble and young, who strikes the heart
  • With ev’ry sprightly, ev’ry decent part;
  • Equal the injured to defend,
  • To charm the Mistress, or to fix the Friend.
  • He, with a hundred arts refin’d,
  • Shall stretch thy conquests over half the kind:
  • To him each rival shall submit,
  • Make but his Riches equal to his Wit.
  • Then shall thy form the marble grace,
  • (Thy Grecian form) and Chloe lend the face:20
  • His house, embosom’d in the grove,
  • Sacred to social life and social love,
  • Shall glitter o’er the pendant green,
  • Where Thames reflects the visionary scene:
  • Thither, the silver-sounding lyres
  • Shall call the smiling Loves, and young Desires;
  • There, ev’ry Grace and Muse shall throng,
  • Exalt the dance, or animate the song;
  • There Youths and Nymphs, in concert gay,
  • Shall hail the rising, close the parting day.
  • With me, alas! those joys are o’er;31
  • For me, the vernal garlands bloom no more.
  • Adieu, fond hope of mutual fire,
  • The still-believing, still-renew’d desire;
  • Adieu, the heart-expanding bowl,
  • And all the kind deceivers of the soul!
  • But why? ah tell me, ah too dear!
  • Steals down my cheek th’ involuntary Tear?
  • Why words so flowing, thoughts so free,
  • Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee?40
  • Thee, drest in Fancy’s airy beam,
  • Absent I follow thro’ th’ extended Dream;
  • Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms,
  • And now you burst (ah cruel!) from my arms;
  • And swiftly shoot along the Mall,
  • Or softly glide by the Canal,
  • Now, shown by Cynthia’s silver ray,
  • And now, on rolling waters snatch’d away.

[Page 217.]The First Ode of the Fourth Book of Horace.

[Line 8.]Number five. The number of Murray’s lodgings in King’s Bench Walk.