chimes,
  With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
  Where’er you find ‘the cooling western breeze,’
  In the next line, it ‘whispers through the trees;’
  If crystal streams ‘with pleasing murmurs 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 Alexandrine ends the song,
  That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. 
  Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
  What’s roundly smooth or languishingly slow;
  And praise the easy vigour of a line,
  Where Denham’s strength, and Waller’s sweetness join. 
  True ease in writing comes from art, not chance. 
  As those move easiest who have learned to dance. 
  ’Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
  The sound must seem an echo to the sense. 
  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. 
  Hear how Timotheus’ varied lays surprise,
  And bid alternate passions fall and rise! 
  While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove
  Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;
  Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
  Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow: 
  Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
  And the world’s victor stood subdued by sound! 
  The power of music all our hearts allow,
  And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.

  Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
  Who still are pleased too little or too much. 
  At every trifle scorn to take offence,
  That always shows great pride, or little sense;
  Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,
  Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest. 
  Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move;
  For fools admire, but men of sense approve: 
  As things seem large which we through mists descry,
  Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

  Some foreign writers, some our own despise;
  The ancients only, or the moderns prize. 
  Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
  To one small sect, and all are damned beside. 
  Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
  And force that sun but on a part to shine,
  Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,
  But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;
  Which from the first has shone on ages past,
  Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;
  Though each may feel increases and decays,
  And see now clearer and now darker days. 
  Regard not, then, if wit be old or new,
  But blame the false, and value still the true.