On a Certain Lady at Court

I know a thing that's most uncommon;

(Envy, be silent and attend!)

I know a reasonable Woman,

Handsome and witty, yet a Friend.

Not warp'd by Passion, awed by Rumour;

Not grave through Pride, nor gay through Folly,

An equal Mixture of good Humour

And sensible soft Melancholy.

"Has she no faults then (Envy says), Sir?"

Yes, she has one, I must aver;

When all the World conspires to praise her,

The Woman's deaf, and does not hear.

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope, (born May 21, 1688, London, England—died May 30, 1744, Twickenham, near London), poet and satirist of the English Augustan period, best known for his poems An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712–14), The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man (1733–34). He is one of the most epigrammatic of all English authors. Pope’s command of diction is no less happily adapted to his theme and to the type of poem, and the range of his imagery is remarkably wide. He has been thought defective in imaginative power, but this opinion cannot be sustained in view of the invention and organizing ability shown notably in The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad. He was the first English poet to enjoy contemporary fame in France and Italy and throughout the European continent and to see translations of his poems into modern as well as ancient languages.

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