Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
  And glitt’ring thoughts struck out at every line;
  Pleased with a work where nothing’s just or fit;
  One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. 
  Poets like painters, thus unskilled to trace
  The naked nature and the living grace,
  With gold and jewels cover every part,
  And hide with ornaments their want of art. 
  True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
  What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed;
  Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,
  That gives us back the image of our mind. 
  As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
  So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. 
  For works may have more wit than does ’em good,
  As bodies perish through excess of blood.

  Others for language all their care express,
  And value books, as women, men, for dress: 
  Their praise is still,—­the style is excellent;
  The sense, they humbly take upon content. 
  Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
  Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. 
  False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
  Its gaudy colours spreads on every place;
  The face of nature we no more survey,
  All glares alike, without distinction gay: 
  But true expression, like th’ unchanging sun,
  Clears and improves whate’er it shines upon,
  It gilds all objects, but it alters none. 
  Expression is the dress of thought, and still
  Appears more decent, as more suitable;
  A vile conceit in pompous words expressed,
  Is like a clown in regal purple dressed: 
  For different styles with different subjects sort,
  As several garbs with country, town, and court. 
  Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
  Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;
  Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style,
  Amaze th’ unlearn’d, and make the learned smile. 
  Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play,
  These sparks with awkward vanity display
  What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;
  And but so mimic ancient wits at best,
  As apes our grandsires, in their doublets dressed. 
  In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
  Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: 
  Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
  Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

  But most by numbers judge a poet’s song;
  And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong: 
  In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire,
  Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;
  Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
  Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
  Not for the doctrine, but the music there. 
  These equal syllables alone require,
  Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;
  While expletives their feeble aid do join,
  And ten low words oft creep in one dull line: 
  While they ring round the same unvaried