A light touch and a wry tone are what readers typically remember from the poetry of Alexander Pope (1688–1744), but he was absurdly talented, a man from whom words poured out in meter and rhyme as though that were their native essence. And why not? Poetry is what all language wants to be, when it grows up. And Pope was exactly as versatile in touch and tone as he needed to be to carry through the theme and topic he had chosen for a poem. 

In “Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady” (1717) what Pope chooses is a forgiving, even praising tone for a woman’s suicide: “Is there no bright reversion in the sky, / For those who greatly think, or bravely die?” And a furious, cursing tone for the people who drove that woman to self-murder: “On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, / And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates.” After three centuries of scholarship, the best guess seems to be that there stands behind the poem no actual incident of a woman who was abandoned by her upper-class family and betrayed in love, only to stab herself. Pope seems rather to have gathered gossip of slightly similar tales to launch an attack on the moral corruption of the wealthy and powerful. His heroic couplets — five-foot iambic lines in pairs of rhymes — bristle with anger and sorrow, and they end with the defeated observation that when the poet dies, all memory of the unfortunate lady will at last expire.

Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
by Alexander Pope

What beck’ning ghost, along the moon-light shade 
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade? 
’Tis she! — but why that bleeding bosom gor’d, 
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword? 
Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell, 
Is it, in heav’n, a crime to love too well? 
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart, 
To act a lover’s or a Roman’s part? 
Is there no bright reversion in the sky, 
For those who greatly think, or bravely die? 

Why bade ye else, ye pow’rs! her soul aspire 
Above the vulgar flight of low desire? 
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes; 
The glorious fault of angels and of gods; 
Thence to their images on earth it flows, 
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows. 
Most souls, ‘tis true, but peep out once an age, 
Dull sullen pris’ners in the body’s cage: 
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years 
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres; 
Like eastern kings a lazy state they keep, 
And close confin’d to their own palace, sleep. 

From these perhaps (ere nature bade her die) 
Fate snatch’d her early to the pitying sky. 
As into air the purer spirits flow, 
And sep’rate from their kindred dregs below; 
So flew the soul to its congenial place, 
Nor left one virtue to redeem her race. 

But thou, false guardian of a charge too good, 
Thou, mean deserter of thy brother’s blood! 
See on these ruby lips the trembling breath, 
These cheeks now fading at the blast of death: 
Cold is that breast which warm’d the world before, 
And those love-darting eyes must roll no more. 
Thus, if eternal justice rules the ball, 
Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall; 
On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, 
And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates. 
There passengers shall stand, and pointing say, 
(While the long fun’rals blacken all the way) 
“Lo these were they, whose souls the furies steel’d, 
And curs’d with hearts unknowing how to yield. 
Thus unlamented pass the proud away, 
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day! 
So perish all, whose breast ne’er learn’d to glow 
For others’ good, or melt at others’ woe.” 

What can atone (oh ever-injur’d shade!) 
Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid? 
No friend’s complaint, no kind domestic tear 
Pleas’d thy pale ghost, or grac’d thy mournful bier. 
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos’d, 
By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos’d, 
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn’d, 
By strangers honour’d, and by strangers mourn’d! 
What though no friends in sable weeds appear, 
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year, 
And bear about the mockery of woe 
To midnight dances, and the public show? 
What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace, 
Nor polish’d marble emulate thy face? 
What though no sacred earth allow thee room, 
Nor hallow’d dirge be mutter’d o’er thy tomb? 
Yet shall thy grave with rising flow’rs be drest, 
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast: 
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow, 
There the first roses of the year shall blow; 
While angels with their silver wings o’ershade 
The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made. 

So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name, 
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. 
How lov’d, how honour’d once, avails thee not, 
To whom related, or by whom begot; 
A heap of dust alone remains of thee, 
’Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be! 

Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung, 
Deaf the prais’d ear, and mute the tuneful tongue. 
Ev’n he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays, 
Shall shortly want the gen’rous tear he pays; 
Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part, 
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart, 
Life’s idle business at one gasp be o’er, 
The Muse forgot, and thou belov’d no more!

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.