When the proud steed shall know why man restrains
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains,-
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god,-
Then shall Man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suff'ring, check'd, impell'd, and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.

Then say not Man 's imperfect, Heav'n in fault,-
Say rather Man 's as perfect as he ought:

His knowledge measur'd to his state and place,
His time a moment, and a point his space.

If to be perfect in a certain sphere,

What matter soon or late, or here or there?
The blest to-day is as completely so,

As who began a thousand years ago.

III. Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
O blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,

That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore.
What future bliss he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;

Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, a humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold!

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A

To be, contents his natural desire

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire:
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

IV. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense
Weigh thy opinion against Providence:
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,-
Say, here he gives too little, there too much!
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, if Man 's unhappy, God's unjust;
If Man alone ingross not Heav'n's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Rejudge his justice, be the god of God.
In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere and rush into the skies!
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,-
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods if angels fell,

Aspiring to be angels men rebel:

And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of Order, sins against th' Eternal Cause.

V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, Earth for whose use, Pride answers, ""Tis for mine! "For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow'r, "Suckles each herb and spreads out ev'ry flow'r; "Annual for me the grape, the rose renew "The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; "For me the mine a thousand treasures brings; "For me health gushes from a thousand springs; "Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;

My footstool earth, my canopy the skies!""

But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? No," " 'tis replied, "the First Almighty Cause

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Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;

Th' exceptions few; some change since all began,
And what created perfect?"-Why then Man?

If the great end be human happiness,
Then Nature deviates; and can Man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show'rs and sunshine, as of Man's desires:
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men for ever temperate, calm, and wise.

ESSAY ON MAN.

If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?

Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storins;
Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind,
mankind?
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge
From pride, from pride our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral, as for natʼral things:

Why charge we Heav'n in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right, is to submit.

Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discompos'd the mind.
But all subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
The gen'ral Order since the whole began
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.

VI. What would this. Man? now upward will he

soar,

And little less than angel, would be more!
Now looking downward, just as griev'd appears
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his use all creatures if he call,
Say what their use had he the pow'rs of all?
Nature to these, without profusion kind,
The proper organs, proper pow'rs assign'd;
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force:
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:

Is Heav'n unkind to Man, and Man alone?

Shall he alone, whom rational we call,

Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bless'd with all?

The bliss of Man, (could Pride that blessing find)

Is not to think or act beyond mankind;

No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,

But what his nature and his state can bear.

Why has not Man a microscopic eye?

For this plain reason, Man is not a fly.

Say what the use were finer optics given?

T'inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n;
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,

To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?
Or quick effluvia darting thro' the brain,

Die of a rose in aromatic pain ?

If Nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,

And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,

How would he wish that Heav'n had left him stil
The whisp'ring zephyr, and the purling rill!
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies?

VII. Far as creation's ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends:
Mark how it mounts to Man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green:
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood!
The spider's touch how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?
How instinct varies in the grov'ling swine,
Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine;
"Twixt that and reason what a nice barrier!
For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and reflection how allied,
What thin partitions sense from thought divide!
And middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th' insuperable line!
Without this just gradation could there be
Subjected these to those, or all to thee?
The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy reason all these pow'rs in one?

VIII. See, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach-from infinite to thee,
From thee to nothing.-On superior pow'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
Or in the full creation leave a void,

Where, one step broken, the great scale 's destroy'd:. From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,

Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

And, if each system in gradation roll

Alike essential to th' amazing whole,
The least confusion but in one, not all

That system only, but the whole must fall.

Let earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,
Planets and suns run lawless thro' the sky:
Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurl'd,
Being on being wreck'd, and world on world;
Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,
And Nature trembles to the throne of God.
All this dread order break-for whom? for thee?
Vile worm!-oh madness! pride! impiety!

IX. What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread,
Or hand, to toil, aspir'd to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another in this general frame:
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,
The great directing mind of all ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; That, chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the same; Great in the earth, as in th' æthereal frame; Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To him no high, no low, no great, no small, He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

X. Cease then, nor Order Imperfection name: Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee. Submit. In this, or any other sphere,

Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see.
All discord, harmony not understood,

All partial evil, universal good:

And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.