Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. 
  Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design;
  And rules as strict his laboured work confine
  As if the Stagirite o’erlooked each line. 
  Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
  To copy nature is to copy them.

  Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,
  For there’s a happiness as well as care. 
  Music resembles poetry, in each
  Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
  And which a master-hand alone can reach. 
  If, where the rules not far enough extend,
  (Since rules were made but to promote their end)
  Some lucky license answer to the full
  Th’ intent proposed, that license is a rule. 
  Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,
  May boldly deviate from the common track;
  From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
  And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
  Which without passing through the judgment, gains
  The heart, and all its end at once attains. 
  In prospects thus, some objects please our eyes,
  Which out of nature’s common order rise,
  The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice. 
  Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
  And rise to faults true critics dare not mend. 
  But tho’ the ancients thus their rules invade,
  (As kings dispense with laws themselves have made)
  Moderns, beware! or if you must offend
  Against the precept, ne’er transgress its end;
  Let it be seldom and compelled by need;
  And have, at least, their precedent to plead. 
  The critic else proceeds without remorse,
  Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.

  I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts
  Those freer beauties, e’en in them, seem faults. 
  Some figures monstrous and misshaped appear,
  Considered singly, or beheld too near,
  Which, but proportioned to their light or place,
  Due distance reconciles to form and grace. 
  A prudent chief not always must display
  His powers in equal ranks, and fair array,
  But with th’ occasion and the place comply,
  Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly. 
  Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
  Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

* * * * *

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: 
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again. 
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise! 
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th’ eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;
But, those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way,
Th’ increasing prospects tire our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!