This is Episode 85 of Poems for the Speed of Life.

Today's poem is a passage from "An Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope.

Alexander Pope was an English poet of the 18th century. When he was 12 he contracted an illness — most probably a form of tuberculosis — which left him in poor health for the rest of his life. He was a lifelong Catholic at a time when that meant being barred from university and public life, and he made a living through popular translations of Homer’s classics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, and through his own poetry, including "The Rape of the Lock", a mock-epic which satirized the London upper-classes.

"An Essay on Criticism" is a long poem that contains such well known lines as "To err is human; to forgive, divine" and "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

The poem offers wisdom and guidance for what poets — and the rest of us too — should strive for in work. This episode includes just a few lines, from the beginning of Part 2, which talks about the dangers of pride, especially when it comes to what we think we know.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠You can read the poem here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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