When Glory, like the dazzling eagle, stood
Perched on my beaver in the Granic flood;
When Fortune's self my standard trembling bore,
And the pale Fates stood 'frighted on the shore.

Of these lines, with another couplet, Dr. Warburton said that they
"contain not only the most sublime but the most judicious imagery that
poetry could conceive or paint." And here are lines from a tragedy, for
me anonymous:

Should the fierce North, upon his frozen wings,
Bear him aloft above the wondering clouds,
And seat him in the Pleiads' golden chariot,
Thence should my fury drag him down to tortures.

Again:

Kiss, while I watch thy swimming eye-balls roll,
Watch thy last gasp, and catch thy springing soul.

It was the age of common-sense, we are told, and truly; but of common-
sense now and then dissatisfied, common-sense here and there ambitious,
common-sense of a distinctively adult kind taking on an innocent tone. I
find this little affectation in Pope's word "sky" where a simpler poet
would have "skies" or "heavens." Pope has "sky" more than once, and
always with a little false air of simplicity. And one instance occurs in
that masterly and most beautiful poem, the "Elegy on an Unfortunate
Lady":

Is there no bright reversion in the sky?