Saturday Rave: Ode on Solitude by Alexander Pope.

 Alexander Pope was vastly unpopular among the gentlemen of the press, and very much loved by his friends.

His family was exiled from London because they were Catholic, and so the young Alexander had largely to teach himself the Greek and Latin that he loved. To add to his difficulties, he contracted tuberculosis of the spine at an early age. This disease left him a hunchback and only four feet six inches tall.

Pope is reckoned to have been the first person in England to have made a living as a writer of literature, and he was (I think) the greatest ever exponent of the heroic couplet. His satire is sharp, and often very funny.

Alexander Pope was no angel. He enjoyed a good feud, and he was well able to survive, and perhaps even relish, the resentment caused by his designating as dunces, in immortal verse, a large proportion of his fellow writers.

This being the case, his Ode to Solitude might come across as rather hypocritical.

But then he did always claim to have written it at the age of twelve.

For myself, I'm rather fond of Alexander Pope.

Happy the man, whose wish and care

   A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

                            In his own ground.

 

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

   Whose flocks supply him with attire,

Whose trees in summer yield him shade,

                            In winter fire.

 

Blest, who can unconcernedly find

   Hours, days, and years slide soft away,

In health of body, peace of mind,

                            Quiet by day,

 

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,

   Together mixed; sweet recreation;

And innocence, which most does please,

                            With meditation.

 

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

   Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

                            Tell where I lie.

Word To Use Today: meditation. This word looks as if it's made up of different bits, but it's meant the same thing more or less for ever. The Latin meditārī means to reflect upon [something].