Alexander Pope

Solitude

Solitude.
Happy the man, whose wish and care

Pastoral inheritance

"Paternal acres"—inherited land, not purchased. Pope's vision of contentment depends on already owning property, a detail that limits who can actually achieve this ideal.

A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

Self-sufficiency catalog

Notice the economic model: herds for dairy, fields for grain, flocks for wool, trees for fuel. This is subsistence farming, not commerce—he produces exactly what he needs.

Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest, who can unconcern'dly find

Time's dissolution

"Slide soft away"—time doesn't march or fly, it dissolves. The verb choice makes aging passive and painless, almost unnoticeable.

Hours, days, and years slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease

Study without ambition

"Study and ease / Together mixt"—learning for pleasure, not advancement. This separates the gentleman scholar from the professional writer (which Pope was).

Together mixt, sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;

Anonymous burial

"Not a stone"—no gravestone, no memorial. This final image contradicts everything about Pope's actual career, which was built on public fame and literary monuments.

Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
Alexander Pope.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Pope's Early Fantasy (Written at Age 12)

CONTEXT Pope wrote this at twelve years old, adapting lines from a Spanish Jesuit poet. It's a schoolboy exercise, which explains both its polish and its complete disconnect from reality.

The poem imagines rural retirement, but Pope never lived this life. He was a professional writer in London's literary marketplace, famous, controversial, constantly publishing. His actual career was the opposite of "unseen, unknown"—he was one of the first English writers to get rich from his work, translating Homer and publishing by subscription.

The fantasy reveals what it excludes: no city, no politics, no religion (notable since Pope was Catholic in Protestant England), no writing for money, no literary feuds. The "paternal acres" assume inherited wealth. The self-sufficient farm assumes you own land and livestock. This isn't a democratic vision—it's a landed gentleman's retirement dream, written by a twelve-year-old who would never be either landed or retired from writing.

What the Rhymes Do

The AABB couplets create a sense of completeness and enclosure—each pair of lines clicks shut like a box. This matches the content: a bounded life, limited acres, self-contained satisfaction.

Watch how Pope uses rhyme to connect opposites: air/attire (nature provides both breath and clothing), shade/fire (the same trees serve both seasons), away/day (time passing versus time present). The rhymes make these pairings feel inevitable, natural.

The final couplet—die/lie—is the poem's only rhyme about death, and it's remarkably casual. "Let me die" rhymes with "where I lie" as if burial were just another form of rest. The rhyme domesticates death, makes it as comfortable as the sound sleep mentioned earlier.