EW Wheeler read by Classic Poetry Aloud: Giving voice to the poetry of the past.

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from an Essay on Criticism

by Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)

Of all the causes which conspire to blind

Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,

What the weak head with strongest bias rules,

Is Pride, the never failing vice of fools.

Whatever Nature has in worth denied

She gives in large recruits of needful Pride:

For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find

What wants in blood and spirits swell'd with wind:

Pride, where Wit fails, steps in to our deference,

And fills up all the mighty void of Sense:

If once right Reason drives that cloud away,

Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.

Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,

Make use of ev'ry friend--and ev'ry foe.

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

First aired: 7 January 2009

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