Of systems possible, if 'tis confess'd, That Wisdom infinite must form the best, Where all must fall, or not coherent be, And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man :
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)
Is only this, if God has placed him wrong?
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.
In human works, though labour'd on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God's, one single can its end produce;
Yet serves to second too, some other use.
So man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
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:2
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, Heaven in fault;
Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measured to his state and place;
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain sphere, 3
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. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribed, 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?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heaven:
2 In the former Editions,
"Now wears a garland, an Ægyptian god."
3 [The four lines, 73-76, are not in the editions of 1735. Warburton says, they followed verse 68 in the first edition, the fourth line being
"As who began ten thousand years ago," which, discrediting the Mosaic account of the creation and duration of the world, probably suggested the alteration.]
"Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind."
ESSAY ON MAN, Ep. i. lines 99, 100.
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.5
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never Is, but always To be blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confined from home,6
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 given,
Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To Be, contents his natural desire,7
He asks no angel's wings, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
4 After ver. 88, in the MS.
"No great, no little; 'tis as much decreed
That Virgil's gnat should die as Cæsar bleed."
5 [Warburton says in the first folio and quarto, these lines were"What bliss above he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy bliss below."
Pope, however, had soon altered them to their present form, for they appear
as above in the editions of 1735.]
6 [In all the early editions, "confined at home." Warburton is said to have suggested the change.]
7 After ver. 108, in the first edition :
"But does he say the Maker is not good,
Till he 's exalted to what state he would;
Himself alone high Heaven's peculiar care,
Alone made happy when he will, and where?"
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