Note 1427 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
The image is drawn from a person leaning towards another, and listening to what he says. Pope took the expression from the simile of the compasses in Donne's Songs and Sonnets:
And though it in the centre sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home.