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Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

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95

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-topt hill, an 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.
To Be, contents his natural desire,

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;

Ver. 93. 94. In the first fol. and quarto,
What bliss above he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy bliss below.
After ver. 108. in the first edit.

But does he say the maker is not good,
Till he's exalted to what state he wou'd:
Himself alone high heav'n's peculiar care,
Alone made happy when he will, and where?

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105

IIO

But

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 fancy'st 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, Re-judge his justice, be the God of GOD. In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies;

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All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.

Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,

125

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.

130

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;

135

Seas

"Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise ;

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My foot-stool 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 reply'd), the first Almighty Cause "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,

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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 temp'rate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not heav'n's design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?

156 Who knows but He, whose hand the light'ning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms; Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind,

Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
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;

D 2

165

That

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.

170

VI. What would this man? Now upward will he

soar,

And little less than angels, would be more;

180

Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears 175
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,

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Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bless'd with all ? The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)

Is not to act or think beyond mankind;

190

No

Ver. 174. And little less than angels, &c.] Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crown'd him with glory and bonour. Psalm viii. 9.

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 giv❜n,

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T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the Heav'n?

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And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heav'n had left him still
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 to the tainted green

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Of

VER. 213. the beadlong lioness] The manner of the lions hunting their prey in the desarts of Africa is this: at their first going out in the night-time, they set up a loud roar, and then listen to the noise made by the beasts in their flight, pursuing them by the ear, and not by the nostril. It is probable the story of the jackall's hunting for the lion, was occasioned by the observation of this defect of scent in that terrible animal,

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