Vices And Virtues Are Of A Strange

Why Did I Write? Whose Sin To Me Unknown Dipt Me In Ink, My Parents', Or My Own? As Yet A Child, Nor Yet A Fool To Fame, I Lisp'd In Numbers, For The Numbers Came.

The Season When To Come, And When To Go, To Sing, Or Cease To Sing, We Never Know.

Such As Are Still Observing Upon Others Are Like Those Who Are Always Abroad At Other Men's Houses, Reforming Everything There While Their Own Runs To Ruin.

I Would Not Be Like Those Authors, Who Forgive Themselves Some Particular Lines For The Sake Of A Whole Poem, And Vice Versa A Whole Poem For The Sake Of Some Particular Lines. I Believe No One Qualification Is So Likely To Make A Good Writer, As The Power Of Rejecting His Own Thoughts.

Soft Is The Strain When Zephyr Gently Blows, And The Smooth Stream In Smoother Numbers Flows; But When Loud Surges Lash The Sounding Shore, The Hoarse Rough Verse Should Like The Torrent Roar. When Ajax Strives Some Rock's Vast Weight To Throw, The Line Too Labours, And The Words Move Slow: Not So When Swift Camilla Scours The Plain, Flies O'er Th' Unbending Corn, And Skims Along The Main.