Essay on Criticism [But most by numbers]

But most by Numbers judge a Poet’s song; And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong: In the bright Muse tho’ thousand charms conspire, Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, Not mend their minds; as some to church repair, Not for the doctrine but the music there. These equal syllables alone require, Tho’ oft the ear the open vowels tire; While expletives their feeble aid do join; And ten low words oft creep in one dull line: While they ring round the same unvary’d chimes, With sure returns of still expected rhymes; Where’er you find “the cooling western breeze,” In the next line it “whispers through the trees” If crystal streams “with pleasing murmurs creep” The reader’s threaten’d (not in vain) with “sleep”: Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.