The Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems
1709
The Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems
1709
One of the most brilliantly satirical poems in English, Pope's mock-epic takes a scandal from the drawing rooms of 1700s London and treats it with the gravity of Homeric warfare. When Lord Petre snips a lock of hair from Arabella Fermor's head, the incident erupts into full-blown tragedy complete with gods, battles, and existential fury. Pope's genius lies in the collision: the most trivial of social infractions rendered in the loftiest heroic couplets, as he skewers an aristocracy that wages war over hair. The sylphs, comic guardian spirits summoned to protect Belinda's virtue, add a layer of absurdist cosmology, treating a fashion emergency as though it were a cosmic crisis. It's razor-sharp, formally immaculate, and devastatingly funny. The joke has lost nothing in three centuries.
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“The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.””
— Alexander Pope
“But now secure the painted vessel glides, The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides: While melting music steals upon the sky, And soften'd sounds along the waters die; 50 Smooth flow the waves, the Zephyrs gently play, Belinda smil'd, and all the world was gay.””
— Alexander Pope
“Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock'd the ground, And the press'd watch return'd a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow prest, Her guardian SYLPH prolong'd the balmy rest:””
— Alexander Pope
“Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.””
— Alexander Pope
“Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast, When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last; Or when rich China vessels fall'n from high, In glitt'ring dust and painted fragments lie! 160””
— Alexander Pope
“And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies. Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast, When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last; Or when rich China vessels fall'n from high, In glitt'ring dust and painted fragments lie! 160””
— Alexander Pope
“Honour forbid! at whose unrivall'd shrine 105 Ease, pleasure, virtue, all our sex resign. Methinks already I your tears survey, Already hear the horrid things they say, Already see you a degraded toast, And all your honour in a whisper lost! 110 How shall I, then, your helpless fame””
— Alexander Pope
“The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare? For this your locks in paper durance bound, For this with tort'ring irons wreath'd around? 100 For this with fillets strain'd your tender head, And bravely bore the double loads of lead?””
— Alexander Pope
