..."sleep:" Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, 355 A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a...length along. Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow ; NOTES. " Non tamen (says the sensible Quintilian)...

...Transported with the view, I'm lost In wonder, love, and praise. Then, at the last and only couplet, fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless...like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch, In the dead waste...

...Thou source of all my bliss, of all my woe, Thou found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so ! 10. A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. i POPE'S Essay on Criticism. 11. Even copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, The last and greatest art —...

...famous passage from An Essay on Criticism quoted earlier, heaps his scorn on such concluding devices: "A needless Alexandrine ends the Song, / That like a wounded Snake, drags its slow length along," brilliantly slowing up his own line with the "slow length." It is interesting to observe that, less...

...streams 'with pleasing murmurs creep': The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with 'sleep.' (Fr. II) 43 ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over In states unborn and accents yet unknown! (Fr. II) 44 True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd...

...alexandrine, and Pope vividly demonstrated the reasons for its relative unpopularity among English poets: 'A needless Alexandrine ends the song/ That like a wounded snake drags its slow length along'. The monometer (onefoot line) is rare, like the heptameter (seven-foot line), also called a 'fourteener'...

...creep,' The reader's threatened (not in vain) with 'sleep.' Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless...length along. Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth, or languishing!}- slow; And praise the easy vigour of a line, 360 Where...

...style: The reader's threatened (not in vain) with 'sleep.' Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless...like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. ("An Essay on Criticism") Working with lines in lengths beyond the pentameter, except for the occasional...

...occasion. 15. Uncomplimentary lines borrowed from Pope's Essay on Criticism, Part 2, lines 356-57. "A needless Alexandrine ends the song, / That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along." Bonner repeats this allusion in Boston column 6. 1 6. Linked with the words "went under," possibly...

...respectively), few versions have followed the example. Pope's well-known comment continues to bite ('A needless Alexandrine ends the song,/ That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along'). The weight and ponderousness of the metre in EngUsh are a substantial disadvantage, evoking as they...