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From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:

Or who could fuffer Being here below?

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The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the laft, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heaven:
Who fees with equal eye, as God of all,

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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 foar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.
What future blifs, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that Hope to be thy bleffing now.
Hope fprings eternal in the human breaft:
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The foul, uneafy, and confin'd from home,
Refts and expatiates in a life to come.

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Lo, the poor Indian! whofe untutor❜d mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;

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VARIATIONS.

After ver. 88, in the MS.

No great, no little; 'tis as much decreed
That Virgil's Gnat fhould die as Cæfar bleed.

Ver. 93, in the first Folio and Quarto,

What blifs above he gives not thee to know,
But gives that Hope to be thy blifs below.

His foul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the folar walk, or milky way;

Yet fimple Nature to his hope has given,

Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heaven;
Some fafer world in depth of woods embrac❜d,

Some happier island in the watery waste,

Where flaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To Be, contents his natural defire,

He afks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog fhall bear him company.

IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy Opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fancy ft fuch;
Say, here he gives too little, there too much:
Deftroy all creatures for thy fport or guft,
Yet fay, If Man 's unhappy, God 's unjuft;
If Man alone ingrofs not Heaven's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his juftice, be the God of God.
In Pride, in reasoning Pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the fkies.

VARIATIONS.

After ver. 108, in the first Edition:

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

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Pride

Pride still is aiming at the bleft abodes,

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Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods.
Afpiring to be Gods, if Angels fell,
Afpiring to be Angels, Men rebel:

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of Order, fins against th' Eternal Cause.

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V. Afk for what end the heavenly bodies shine, Earth for whofe ufe? Pride anfwers, " "Tis for mine: "For me kind Nature wakes her genial power; "Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; "Annual for me, the grape, the rofe, renew "The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; "For me, the mine a thoufand treasures brings; "For me, health gufhes from a thousand springs; Seas roll to waft me, funs to light me rife;

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My foot-ftool earth, my canopy the kies." But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning funs 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 firft Almighty Caufe "Acts not by partial, but by general laws; "Th' exceptions few; fome change fince all began: "And what created perfect ?"-Why then Man? If the great end be human Happiness,

Then Nature deviates; and can Man do lefs?
As much that end a conftant course requires
Of showers and fun-fhine, as of Man's defires
As much eternal fprings and cloudless skies,
As men for ever temperate, calm, and wife.

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If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's defign, Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?

Who knows, but he whofe hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the ftorms; Pours fierce Ambition in a Cæfar's mind,

Or turns young Ammon loofe to fcourge mankind? 160
From pride, from pride, our very reasoning fprings;
Account for moral as for natural things:

Why charge we Heaven in thofe, in these acquit?
In both, to reafon 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 paffion difcompos'd the mind.
But all fubfifts by elemental strife;
And paffions are the elements of Life.

The general Order, fince the whole began,
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.

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VI. What would this Man? Now upward will he foar, And, little lefs than Angel, would be more;

Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears 175
To want the ftrength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his ufe all creatures if he call,
Say what their ufe, had he the powers of all ?
Nature to thefe, without profufion, kind,
The proper organs, proper powers affign'd;
Each feeming want compenfated of course,
Here with degrees of fwiftnefs, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the state;

Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.

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Each

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Each beast, each infect, happy in its own:
Is Heaven unkind to Man, and Man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,

Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bleft with all?
The blifs of Man (could Pride that bleffing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;

No powers of body or of foul to share,

But what his nature and his ftate can bear.
Why has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reafon, Man is not a Fly.
Say what the ufe, were finer optics given,

T'' infpect a mite, not comprehend the heaven ?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To fmart and agonize at every pore?

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Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,
Die of a rofe in aromatic pain?

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If nature thunder'd in his opening ears,

And ftunn'd him with the mufic of the fpheres,
How would he wish that Heaven had left him still
The whispering Zephyr, and the purling rill!
Who finds not Providence all good and wife,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies?

VII. Far as Creation's ample range extends,
The fcale of fenfual, mental powers afcends:
Mark how it mounts to Man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grafs :
What modes of fight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam;
Of fmell, the headlong lionefs between,

And hound fagacious on the tainted green;

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