The Rape of the Lock Cantos 1: Lines 1 - 12

What dire Offence from am'rous Causes springs,
What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things,
I sing—This Verse to C—-, Muse! is due;
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchfafe to view:
Slight is the Subject, but not so the Praise,
If She inspire, and He approve my Lays.

Say what strange Motive, Goddess! cou'd compel
A well-bred Lord t'assault a gentle Belle?
Oh say what stranger Cause, yet unexplor'd,
Cou'd make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?
And dwells such Rage in softest Bosoms then?
And lodge such daring Souls in Little Men?

I thought that the beginning of the poem spoke most about reason and what idea Pope was really trying to establish. While it took me over an hour to really understand anything going on in the poem at all (maybe because I'm tired?). Basically what we've got here is a mock epic poem, and in it Pope basically makes the claim that people do not use the reason that they have available to them. It seems that he is making fun of the fact that epic poem writers create a huge fuss of the most ridiculous things. Later in Canto 3 a good example of this comes out when Belinda's hair is snipped in half and it basically becomes the end of the world. Pope must think that the great epic writers through history were not using their common senses when composing such works. They wrote about things that meant nothing to the world, thus adding no real greatness to our collections of literature.

Pope uses the concept of the "muse" to further add to his mockery of epic poetry. Because many of the great epic writers so commonly used their muses to put sole responsibility on for what they wrote down (ie Milton in Paradise Lost), Pope asks why in the world a muse would choose to write about such unimportant things. In lines 7-8 Pope asks, "Say what strange Motive, Goddess! cou'd compel A well-bred Lord t'assault a gentle Belle?" Here Pope is basically mocking poets for using their "muses" as excuses for what they write, as if they become more credible or something. Using apostrophe, Pope poses the question of why reason is not being used when common sense is so readily accessible within ourselves. When Pope says in line 2, "What mighty contests rise from Trivial things," he uses the word "mighty" to contrast with the word "trivial" to show how ridiculous it is when so many times small matters are blown way out of proportion and people do not have the reason to see their own stupidity. The way Pope points these things out is rather interesting to me. In a large way, what he's saying in this passage makes a lot of sense. Even today people still forgo their own common sense for other reasons. Humans are the only creatures who will go back and repeat their same mistakes even right after getting either hurt or "caught." An animal who bites a piece of food connected to an electric wire and gets zapped is going to learn right away not to do it again. A human on the other hand, would probably try again. And it may even be the smallest trivial thing, but we still do it. I think this is largely what Pope is trying to get across here.