Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
The Cave of Pope
By AnonymousW
Shall wrap the names of heroes and of kings;
And their high deeds, submitting to the stroke
Of time, shall fall amongst forgotten things:
On Thames’s bank the stranger shall arrive,
With curious wish thy sacred grott to see,
Thy sacred grott shall with thy name survive.
With pious hand the ruin shall repair:
Some good old man, to each inquiring sage
Pointing the place, shall cry, “The bard lived there
Yet taught audacious vice and folly shame:
Easy his manners, but his life severe;
His word alone gave infamy or fame.
Beneath this silent roof the Muse he found;
’T was here he slept inspired, or sat and writ;
Here with his friends the social glass went round.”
The steps which thou so long before hast trod;
With reverent wonder view the solemn place
From whence thy genius soared to nature’s God.
Departing, each shall pilfer, in fond hope
To please their friends on every distant shore,
Boasting a relic from the cave of Pope.