Alexander Pope

Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense
Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
Say, here he gives too little, there too much:
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust;
If man alone engross not Heav'n's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Rejudge his justice, be the God of God.
In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of order, sins against th' Eternal Cause.

Thats cool and all buddy, but I paid you 5 bucks to read my fortune, so, er, can you do it or not?

Behold! user seeks sight for his fortune,
A fedora-wearing creep on Veeky Forums.
I know nothing of your fate or future,
No balm for past, or healing set suture.
I know of this, for single fact arrive:
You paid poorly, and I now have your five.

Okay, superlegit. I will write iambic pentameter pieces on certain comments left on this page. I encourage others to do likewise. I am going to bed, but in the morning, if this thread is still alive, I will be one busy man.

Go forth!

My sides!

I hate when my mind is blank
like verse, it hurts
and I dont know iambic
so I will be curt
but do pray tell
our lort to keep this thread a live
and fit an ass through a needle
and so it into my eye
for a camel spits
and gives me no hump
and all I want
is a treasured chest for dumps
and bumps of clumps lumped
in front of some sumps dont
trump cunts of runts bunts
in front affronts for the fun
of dumb dunce who munch
lunch for brunch in bunches of crunches
all to digest sumptuous hunches at once

OP has done nothing to dispel my notion that Pope is too smart for the likes of me.

Friendly reminder that Pope was literally a 4'6" midget virgin who suffered from numerous health problems

Say what strange Motive, Goddess! could compel
A well-bred Lord to assault a gentle Belle?
Oh say what stranger Cause, yet unexplored,
Could make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?

And a hunchback too

>From the age of 12, he suffered numerous health problems, such as Pott's disease (a form of tuberculosis that affects the bone), which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a severe hunchback. His tuberculosis infection caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes, and abdominal pain.[4] He grew to a height of only 1.37 m (4 ft 6 in). Pope was already removed from society because he was Catholic; his poor health only alienated him further.

>physically deformed to the point where you're alienated from the rest of society
Sounds like a pretty Veeky Forums life to me

and yet...

What's a good place to start with Pope?

That's amazing, thanks, user! I know nothing of Pope's except for parts of his Iliad translation which I can't really stomach precisely because of this kind of couplets and metre. On his own right though this sounds very good and the theme is relevant to me, too. Where to start with him?

someone shoop pepe's face over this portrait so I can say Alexander Pepe

I had a meh-ish poem done for this, but Veeky Forums crapped out on me and I lost it. So you get nothing.

Good grief! Good God! Look at the state of verse!
We have users caught in poems perverse,
Wherein they think a clever mind possess,
Wherein, as fact, their thought subpar and less.

Some lurker creep'ly crawls from basement dark,
To make nonsense noise just as dogs do bark.
Here a mule-rider stops and grasps for straws,
For laudations or ill-sounding applause.

Do not think rhyme were half of this great art,
As good meter is the important part.

I heard a Danish philosopher state:
It's not that my words are complex in great,
For I think them concise and appropriate,
Therefore, the reader must be idiot.

Rape of the Lock, Essay on Man, or Essay on Criticism. I just finished a sampling of his work in my pre-twentieth century English lit class. Make sure that you have minimal historical/political background knowledge of his time. Satire isn't as fun if you don't know what he's mocking. But honestly his work doesn't really need to be read in any order you just need pretext.

Hellenistic praise of the beauteous,
Of the wellness in the extraneous,
Of the warrior-body in the fight,
Draw close the circle of perfection tight.

Yet, among them all, their poet was blind,
And Oedipus had his foot found in bind;
Aesop a midget with unsightly mien,
And Socrates the ugliest they've seen.

Although laughter abounds within our mouth,
The past would look to us in scorn uncouth.
We revere the body and its stature,
But not the fount spring of literature.

The excerpt above came from the Essay on Man, which I would definitely recommend first.

I come home from a hard day's work and slog
To surf through Veeky Forums and its pages: a frog!

If Hitler did everything the same, but was a midget, would he have the exact same number of admirers?

lol mini hitler would be too cute to hate