Alexander Pope

What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?

True friendship's laws are by this rule expressed Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

Truth needs not flowers of speech.

Like following life through creatures you dissect, You lose it in the moment you detect.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown, Thus unlamented let me die, Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.

Ignobly vain, and impotently great.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen to oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each Seene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.

Years following years steal something every day; At last they steal us from ourselves away.

Who builds a church to God and not to fame, Will never mark the marble with his name.