St Cecilia's Day

JFK

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer Being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle marked by Heav'n;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Nor was the Work impair'd by Storms alone,
But felt th'Approaches of too warm a Sun;
For Fame, impatient of Extreams, decays
Not more by Envy than Excess of Praise.
Yet Part no injuries of Heav'n could feel,
Like Crystal faithful to the graving Steel;
The Rock's high Summit, in the Temple's Shade,
Nor Heat could melt, nor beating Storm invade.
. .
[This] ever new, nor subject to Decays,
Spread[s], and grow[s] brighter with the length of Days.

Alexander Pope
Yale University Press, 1963©


An Essay on Man, 1734
Epistle I, iii, 77-90


The Temple of Fame, 1711
41-52


Mathias Lauridsen