All feed on one vain Patron, and enjoy

Th' extenfive bleffing of his luxury,

That very life his learned hunger craves,

He faves from famine, from the favage faves;
Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast,

65

And, 'till he ends the being, makes it bleft;
Which fees no more the stroke, or feels the pain,
Than favour'd Man by touch etherial flain.
The creature had his feast of life before;
Thou too muft perish, when thy feast is o'er!
To each unthinking being, Heav'n a friend,
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end:
To Man imparts it; but with such a view
As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too:
The hour conceal'd, and so remote the fear,
Death ftill draws nearer, never seeming near.
Great ftanding miracle! that Heav'n affign'd
Its only thinking thing this turn of mind.

70

75

II. Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them beft; 80 To blifs alike by that direction tend,

And find the means proportion'd to their end.

NOTES.

VER. 68. Than favour'd Man, &c.] Several of the ancients, and many of the Orientals fince, efteemed those who were ftruck by lightning as facred persons, and the particular favourites of Heaven. P.

F

Say, where full Inftinct is th' unerring guide,
What Pope or Council can they need befide?
Reafon, however able, cool at beft,
Cares not for fervice or but ferves when preft,
Stays 'till we call, and then not often near;
But honeft Inftinct comes a Volunteer,
Sure never to o'er-fhoot, but juft to hit;

85

While ftill too wide or fhort is human Wit;

90

Sure by quick Nature happiness to gain,
Which heavier Reafon labours at in vain.
This too ferves always, Reafon never long;
One must go right, the other may go wrong.
See then the acting and comparing pow'rs
One in their nature, which are two in ours!
And Reafon raife o'er Inftinct as you can,
In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis Man.

95

Who taught the nations of the field and wood To fhun their poifon, and to chufe their food? 100 Prescient, the tides or tempefts to withstand, Build on the wave, or arch beneath the fand?

VARIATION S.

After ver. 84. in the MS.

While Man, with op'ning views of various ways
Confounded, by the aid of knowledge ftrays:
Too weak to chufe, yet chufing ftill in hafte,
One moment gives the pleasure and diftafte.

Who made the spider parallels defign,

Sure as De-moivre, without rule or line?

Heav'ns not his own, and worlds unknown before?
Who calls the council, ftates the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?
III. God, in the nature of each being, founds
proper blifs, and fets it proper bounds:

Its

But as he fram'd a Whole, the Whole to bless,
On mutual Wants built mutual Happiness:
So from the firft, eternal ORDER ran;

And creature link'd to creature, man to man.
Whate'er of life all quick'ning æther keeps, iis
Or breathes thro' air, or fhoots beneath the deeps,
Or
pours profufe on earth, one nature feeds
The vital flame, and fwells the genial feeds.
Not man alone, but all that roam the wood,
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each fex defires alike, 'till two are one.

120

Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace; They love themselves a third time in their race. Thus beaft and bird their common charge attend, 125 The mothers nurse it, and the fires defend; The young difmifs'd to wander earth or air, -There ftops the Instinct, and there ends the care:

130

The link diffolves, each feeks a fresh embrace,
Another love fucceeds, another race.

A longer care man's helpless kind demands;
That longer care contracts more lasting bands:
Reflection, Reason, still the ties improve,

At once extend the int'reft, and the love;
With choice we fix, with fympathy we burn; 135
Each virtue in each paffion takes its turn:

And still new needs, new helps, new habits rife,
That graft benevolence on charities.

Still as one brood, and as another rofe,

These natʼral love maintain'd, habitual those: 140
The laft, fcarce ripen'd into perfect Man,
Saw helpless him from whom their life began;
Mem'ry and fore-cast just returns engage,
That pointed back to youth, this on to age,
While pleasure, gratitude, and hope, combin'd, 145
Still spread the int'reft, and preserv'd the kind.

[trod;

IV. Nor think, in NATURE'S STATE they blindly The ftate of Nature was the reign of god: Self-love and focial at her birth began, Union the bond of all things, and of Man. Pride then was not; nor Arts, that pride to aid; Man walk'd with beaft, joint tenant of the fhade;

NOTES.

15.0

VER. 152. Man walk'd with beast, joint tenant of the fade] The poet ftill: takes his imagery from Platonic

The fame his table, and the fame his bed;
No murder cloath'd him, and no murder fed.
In the fame temple, the refounding wood,
All vocal beings hymn'd their equal God:

NOTES.

155

ideas for the reafon given above. Plato had faid from old tradition, that, during the golden age, and under the reign of Saturn, the primitive language then in use was common to man and beafts. Moral inftructors took advantage of the popular fenfe of this tradition, to convey their precepts under those fables, which give fpeech to

the whole brute creation. The naturalifts understood the tradition to fignify, that, in the first Ages, Men used inarticulate founds, like beafts, to express their wants and fenfations; and that it was by flow degrees they came to the use of speech. This opinion was afterwards held by Lucretius, Diodorus Sic. and Gregory of Nyff.

VER. 156. All vocal beings, &c.] This may be well explained by a fublime paffage of the pfalmift, who, calling to mind the age of innocence, and full of the great ideas of those

Chains of Love,

Combining all below, and all above,

Which to one point and to one center bring

Beast, Man, or Angel, Servant, Lord, or King;

breaks out into this rapturous and divine apoftrophe, to call back the devious creation to its priftine rectitude (that very ftate our author describes above): “Praise the Lord, "all his angels; praife him, all ye hofts. Praife ye him, "fun and moon; praise him, all ye ftars of light. Let "them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded, "and they were created. Praise the Lord, from the "earth, ye dragons, and all deeps; fire and hail, fnow and vapour, ftormy wind fulfilling his word: Moun