Alexander Pope wrote his “Ode on Solitude” before he was twelve years old. The poem consists of five numbered quatrains. Each quatrain has the rime scheme, ABAB.
Stanza 1: “How happy he, who free from care”
The speaker exclaims that the man who is free from “courts” and “towns” and owns his own small farm where he can “breath[ ] his native air” is the happiest man. The reader will find the serenity of the situation described here to be quite hypnotic. The idealism is sweet and unaffected.
Stanza 2: “Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread”
The speaker continues to describe the farmer’s life: he has his own milk from his own cows, he makes his own bread from the grain he grows in his own fields, he makes his own clothes from his own sheep’s wool, and his trees shade him from the sun in summer and supply wood for heating his home in winter.
The self-contained farm with a self-reliant farmer is a romantic notion that emerged with the rise of cities. The simple country folk became a symbol of nature that was particularly played up in the next century by the Romantic Movement.
Stanza 3: “Blest! who can unconcern’dly find”
The speaker portrays this rural farmer as a satisfied individual for whom time passes swiftly, because the farmer has “health of body” and “peace of mind.” The quietness of his rustic setting is thought to be soothing to the farmer’s nerves, as he toils away in his pastoral paradise.
Stanza 4: “Sound sleep by night; study and ease”
The farmer sleeps “sound[ly] by night.” He is free to study leisurely and enjoy “sweet recreation.” He passes his days harmlessly and enjoys his hours of quiet meditation. The young Pope paints a scene that many would find ideal.
Stanza 5: “Thus let me live, unheard, unknown”
In the final stanza, the speaker asks that he be allowed to live “unheard, unknown.” He wants to be like the farmer at least in his status as a commoner who lived silently and did not intrude on others. And when the speaker dies, he wants no fanfare. He just wants to flit off from the world and not even have his name engraved on a tombstone.
Commentary
The scenario Pope describes is a lovely one to be sure, although quite a romantic oversimplification of the rural man’s life. His speaker, for example, does not let the backbreaking labor, crop failures, poverty, and seasonal uncertainties of the laboring farmer’s existence interfere with his portrayal. But then Pope was only a lad when he romanticized this scene.
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