(The Rape of the Lock.)
Of course Pope,[44] in the close of the Dunciad and elsewhere, has passages of the utmost dignity; and the antithetic arrangement is good for satire. But perhaps the finest passages of this class of couplet—certainly the finest with the Dunciad close—are the following, from
(d) Johnson (Vanity of Human Wishes—end):
Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find?
Must dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind?
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise,
No cries invoke the mercies of the skies?
. . . . . . .
Yet, when the sense of sacred presence fires
And strong devotion to the skies aspires,
Pour forth thy favours for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resigned;
For love which scarce collective man can fill;
For patience sovereign o'er transmuted ill;
For faith that, panting for a happier seat,
Counts death kind nature's signal of retreat.
These goods for man the laws of Heaven ordain,
These goods He grants who grants the power to gain;
With these celestial Wisdom calms the mind,
And makes the happiness she does not find.
and
(e) Crabbe ("Delay brings Danger"—end):
Early he rose, and looked with many a sigh
On the red light that filled the eastern sky;
Oft had he stood before, alert and gay,
To hail the glories of the new-born day:
But now dejected, languid, listless, low,
He saw the wind upon the water blow,
And the cold stream curled onward as the gale
From the pine hill blew harshly down the dale;
On the right side the youth a wood surveyed,
With all its dark intensity of shade;
Where the rough wind alone was heard to move,
In this, the pause of nature and of love,
When now the young are reared, and when the old,
Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold—
Far to the left he saw the huts of men,
Half hid in mist, that hung upon the fen;
Before him swallows gathering for the sea,
Took their short flights and twittered on the lea;
And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done,
And slowly blackened in the sickly sun;
All these were sad in nature, or they took
Sadness from him, the likeness of his look
And of his mind—he pondered for a while,
Then met his Fanny with a borrowed smile.
(Observe, besides the other points mentioned, that trisyllabic feet practically never occur in Garth, Pope, and Johnson—"wat'ry for watery," and words like "ether(ea)l," "celest(ia)l," "happ(ie)r," being intended to take the benefit of elision, though, as a matter of fact, they give that of extension. Only Crabbe, in "gathering," may perhaps not have meant "gath'ring.")
XXXII. Eighteenth-Century Blank Verse
(a) Thomson: