Alexander Pope - Windsor Forest
I have long loved Pope’s satiric poetry but I have recently read this earlier, non-satiric poem. Here it is in full http://www.bartleby.com/203/20.html
The natural description come across as very odd to anyone used to romantic description of nature, all much in conventional terms: to anyone familiar with the landscape near Windsor (now sadly suburban) the references to “mountains” are just funny. To our ears the references to Queen Anne (a rather uncharismatic person by all accounts) sound sycophantic “At length great ANNA said, ‘Let discord cease!/ She said! the world obey’d, and all was peace!” I ask you.
But there are some very good things in it. Here is the description of the Norman kings oppressing the Saxons to create their great hunting grounds (in contrast to the happy pastoral landscape of Windsor Forest under Queen Anne):
"Not thus the land appear’d in ages past,
A dreary desert, and a gloomy waste,
To savage beasts and savage laws a prey,
And Kings more furious and severe than they;
Who claim’d the skies, dispeopled air and floods,
The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods."
I think the final line is wonderful.
