See, a long 26 race thy spacious courts adorn; See thy bright altars throng'd with prostrate kings, And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow. No more the rising 30 sun shall gild the morn, O'erflow thy courts: the Light himself shall shine 26 Isa. ch. lx. ver. 4. 28 Isa. ch. lx. ver. 6. 27 Ch. lx. ver. 3. 100 105 29 ["What sweets soe'er Sabæan springs disclose."-Dryden's Aurengzebe.] 30 Ch. lx. ver. 19, 20. 31 Ch. li. ver. 6, and ch. liv. ver. 10. THE TEMPLE OF FAME. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1711. [It was afterwards subjected to frequent revision, and not published until 1714. Steele, to whom the MS. had been submitted, writes to Pope, Nov. 12, 1712, "I have read over your Temple of Fame twice, and cannot find any. thing amiss of weight enough to call a fault, but see in it a thousand thousand beauties. Mr. Addison shall see it to-morrow. Pope, in reply, expressed his great anxiety that his friend should "freely mark or dash out;" and he said his own diffidence of the piece was such that he had suffered it to lie by him for two years. The poem is in Pope's loftiest style, and abounds in noble passages, especially the concluding twenty lines, which possess a fine personal and biographical interest. Chaucer took the hint of some of his pieces from the poets, "Whose rhetoric sweet Enlumined all Italy of poetry." But in his House of Fame, he appears as an original, fired with what Warton calls "Gothic imagination," bold conceptions, and quaint and striking imagery, sometimes running into wildness and extravagance. Pope has taken comparatively little from his great prototype-not more than Shakspeare took from the early novels and translations on which he grafted some of his greatest dramas. The following is an advertisement prefixed by Pope to the poem: "The hint of the following piece was taken from Chaucer's House of Fame. The design is in a manner entirely altered, the descriptions and most of the particular thoughts my own: yet I could not suffer it to be printed without this acknowledgment. The reader who would compare this with Chaucer, may begin with his third book of Fame, there being nothing in the two first books that answers to their title. Wherever any hint is taken from him, the passage itself is set down in the marginal notes"] : IN that soft season, when descending showers Call forth the greens, and wake the rising flowers; 1 This poem is introduced in the manner of the Provençal poets, whose works were for the most part visions, or pieces of imagination, and constantly descriptive. From these, Petrarch and Chaucer frequently borrow the idea of their poems. See the Trionfi of the former, and the Dream, Flower, and the Leaf, &c., of the latter. The author of this therefore, chose the same sort of exordium. When opening buds salute the welcome day, I stood, methought, betwixt earth, seas, and skies: 2 The whole creation open to my eyes: 5 10 In air self-balanced hung the globe below, O'er the wide prospect as I gazed around, Whose towering summit ambient clouds conceal'd, 2 These verses are hinted from the following of Chaucer, book 2:"Tho' beheld I fields and plains, Now hills, and now mountains, Now valeis, and now forestes, And now unneath great bestes, Now rivers, now citees, Now towns, now great trees, 3 Chaucer's third book of Fame: "It stood upon so high a rock, Higher standeth none in Spayne- The wondrous rock like Parian marble shone, It was, I niste readily; But at the last espied I, And found that it was every dele, Their names by, for out of drede That they were molte away for heate 6" For on that other side I sey Of that hill which northward ley, 30 35 40 45 [The The rock's high summit, in the temple's shade, From Time's first birth, with Time itself shall last; 50 Spread, and grow brighter with the length of days. Rise white in air, and glitter o'er the coast; Pale suns, unfelt, at distance roll away, 55 And on the impassive ice the lightnings play; Eternal snows the growing mass supply, Till the bright mountains prop the incumbent sky: The gather'd winter of a thousand years. 60 On this foundation Fame's high temple stands ; Stupendous pile! not rear'd by mortal hands. 65 70 Who cities raised, or tamed a monstrous race, The walls in venerable order grace: Heroes in animated marble frown, And legislators seem to think in stone. The self day, or that houre That heate might not it deface." 7 The temple is described to be square: the four fronts with open gates facing the different quarters of the world, as an intimation that all nations of the earth may alike be received into it. The western front is of Grecian architecture. The Doric order was peculiarly sacred to heroes and worthies. Those whose statues are after mentioned, were the first names of old Greece in arms and arts. |