Dr Octavia Cox | Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism ANALYSIS & CLOSE READING | sound must seem an echo to the sense @DrOctaviaCox | Uploaded May 2020 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM by ALEXANDER POPE | Literature Analysis | Close reading of the brilliant “dull rhymes” passage from Alexander Pope’s masterpiece An Essay on Criticism (1711) - a tour de force of poetic technique, skill, & craft. I explain how Alexander Pope masterfully mocks bad poetry, by imitating & thus exposing it. What does Pope mean by “The Sound must seem an Echo to the Sense”? How does Pope use onomatopoeia in the poem? Should verse be smooth or rough? Whose are “dull rhymes”? And what are “tuneful fools”?

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PASSAGE
But most by Numbers judge a Poet’s Song
And smooth or rough with them is right or wrong
In the bright Muse tho’ thousand Charms conspire
Her Voice is all these tuneful Fools admire
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their Ear
Not mend their Minds as some to Church repair
Not for the Doctrine but the Musick there
These Equal Syllables alone require
Tho oft the Ear the open Vowels tire
While Expletives their feeble Aid do join
And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line
While they ring round the same unvary’d Chimes
With sure Returns of still expected Rhymes
Where-e’er you find the cooling Western Breeze
In the next Line, it whispers thro the Trees
If Chrystal Streams with pleasing Murmurs creep
The Reader’s threaten’d (not in vain) with Sleep
Then at the last and only Couplet fraught
With some unmeaning Thing they call a Thought
A needless Alexandrine ends the Song
That like a wounded Snake drags its slow length along
Leave such to tune their own dull Rhimes and know
What’s roundly smooth or languishingly slow
And praise the Easie Vigor of a Line
Where Denham’s Strength and Waller’s Sweetness join
True Ease in Writing comes from Art not Chance
As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance
Tis not enough no Harshness gives Offence
The Sound must seem an Echo to the Sense

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