The Poetry of Pope: A Selection (Crofts Classics Series)

The editor in his Introduction states: Like many of the neoclassic age, Pope chose to pursue his art under extraordinarily narrow conditions. All but a handful of his poems, of the ten-syllable closed couplet-a form permitting little deviation from iambic rhythm, in which most of the paired lines compose some sort of syntactic unit and are marked off further by the weight and finality of the rhyme. The result is that two lines in Pope often function as a stanza does in other poets. Popes greatest achievements are in satire, he exhibits an astonishing range of feeling. Within the province of his satires, Pope is consistently a moralist. In them he assumes and sustains remarkably the position of the magnanimous man, whose natural kindliness is tempered by a stern sense of justice. Pope's most characteristic device wass to apply the standards of heroic literature and high tragedy to the trivial follies and vices of his own polite age. He does not ridicule men because they are trivial, but because they remain trivial while capable of greatness. M.H. Abrams also explains that most of the poems included in this work were published by Pope's executor in 1751. He has added notes where advantageous and to indicate the scope of Pope's achievement all poems are reproduced in their entirety.