Poetry According to Samuel Johnson
“Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with beauty by calling imagination to the help of reason.”
On a Certain Lady at Court – Alexander Pope
I know the thing that’s most uncommon;
(Envy be silent, and attend!)
I know a reasonable woman,
Handsome and witty, yet a friend.
Not warp’d by passion, awed by rumour,
Not grave through pride, or gay through folly;
An equal mixture of good-humour,
And sensible soft melancholy.
“Has she no faults then (Envy says), Sir?”
Yes, she has one, I must aver;
When all the world conspires to praise her, -
The woman’s deaf, and does not hear.
