Alexander Pope: A Natural Man

This was definitely an interesting read, as far as poetry goes.  I must say that I was surprised by his form and his choice to use an A-A, B-B, C-C, etc format. I am not sure if there was a language barrier or not from a change in pronunciation but there were certain points where his words didn't actually rhyme, for example, sphere and bear. This could just be a time period difference, though. 

Out of all four of the epistles, I think the third was my favorite. I felt like Pope had a lot of really good analogies and a lot of really great lines of imagery.  The way that he weaved nature in and out of the poem in combination with man was really striking. In the beginning, he begins by describing man as emerging from foam and describing the sea. Throughout the poem, he brings back the image of water, as well as fire and lightning. He also describes man as a vine that society is growing on.  I wasn't sure initially why he had chosen to insert nature in that epistle, but he did a good job making sense of it. It seems as though he is saying that man came from nature, but then over took nature because both an and nature come from God, but man has the ability to rise above.  But in the same way that man comes from God, so has nature, so it should be respected. It had a nice little ending of things with man and nature co-existing and supporting each other under the reign of God.