Alexander Pope's Universal Prayer

Alexander Pope · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 4 pages

Four pages carrying Pope's Universal Prayer of 1738 in full, with a short headnote explaining that it was written to correct the impression of fatalism which Warburton's exposition of the Essay on Man had failed to remove, and a closing page of suggested further reading.

The prayer is addressed to the Father of all, adored in every age and in every clime by saint, by savage and by sage, under the names Jehovah, Jove or Lord — the line that has kept the poem in anthologies of universal religion ever since. Its argument moves from what man cannot know to what he must still do. Pope calls God the Great First Cause, least understood, who confined his senses to knowing only that God is good and that he himself is blind, yet gave him sight enough to tell good from ill, and, binding Nature fast in fate, left the human will free. The middle stanzas ask for conscience to be a stronger guide than either fear of Hell or hope of Heaven, and for the poet's own weak, unknowing hand not to presume to throw God's bolts and deal damnation round the land on each he judges to be God's enemy. Two further requests are for correction rather than confirmation — if I am right, thy grace impart; if I am wrong, teach my heart to find a better way — and for the plainest of moral exchanges: teach me to feel another's woe, and show me the mercy I show to others. The closing stanza widens to a temple that is all space and an altar of earth, sea and skies. The final page lists related files on true prayer as against vain prayer across four of the site's other series.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.6 MB, 4 pages)