Obferve how fyftem into fyftem runs,
What other planets circle other funs,
What vary'd Being peoples ev'ry star,
May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.
But of this frame the bearings and the ties,
The ftrong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations juft, has thy pervading foul
Look'd thro'? or can a p

part contain the whole?

Is the great chain, that draws all to agree, And drawn fupports, upheld by God, or thee?

Prefumptuous Man! the reafon wouldst thou find, Why form'd fo weak, fo little, and fo blind? First, if thou canft, the harder reafon guefs, Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no lefs. Afk of thy mother Earth, why oaks are made Taller and ftronger than the weeds they fhade Or ask of yonder argent fields above, Why Jove's Satellites are less than Jove?

Of Syftems poffible, if 'tis confest, That Wisdom infinite muft form the best, Where all muft full, or not coherent be, And all that rifes, rife in due degree; Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain, There muft be, fomewhere, fuch a rank as Man: And all the queftion (wrangle e'er fo long)" Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong?

Refpecting

Refpecting 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 fingle can its end produce;
Yet ferves to fecond too fome other ufe.
So Man, who here feems principal alone,
Perhaps acts fecond to fome sphere unknown,
Touches fome wheel, or verges to fome goal;
"Tis but a part we fee, and not a whole.

When the proud fteed fhall know why man reftrains

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 fhall Man's pride and dullness comprehend
His actions', paffions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, fuff'ring, check'd, impell'd; and why
This hour a flave, the next a deity.

Then fay not Man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault:
Say rather, Man's as perfect as he ought;
His knowledge meafur'd to his ftate and place;
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain fphere,

What matter, foon or late, or here or there §
The bleft to-day is as completely fo,
As who began a thousand years ago.

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prefcrib'd, their present state; From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could fuffer Being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reafon, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the laft, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to fhed his blood.
Oh blindnefs to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:
Who fees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a fparrow fall,

Atoms or fyftems into ruin hurl'd, urah od
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 breast: Man never Is, but always To be bleft: The foul, uneafy, and confin'd from home, Refts and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian; whofe untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind-; His foul, proud Science never taught to stray Far as the folar walk, or milky way; Yet fimple Nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n;

Some

Some fafer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the watry waste,

Where flaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Chriftians 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 fky,
His faithful dog fhall bear him company.

ESSAY ON MAN, V. 2. P. 43.

THE PROGRESSION OF ANIMAL LIFE. WHAT would this Man? Now upward will he foar, li

And, little lefs than Angel, would be more;
Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears
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 pow'rs of all?
Nature to thefe, without profufion, kind,
The proper organs, proper pow'rs 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.

"

Each beaft, each infect, 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 bleft with all?

The blifs of Man (could Pride that bleffing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind;

No

No pow'rs of body, or of foul to fhare,

But what his nature and his ftate can bear.
Why has not Man a microfcopic eye?
For this plain reafon, Man is not a Fly.
Say what the ufe, were finer optics giv'n,
T' infpect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n ?-
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To fmart and agonize at ev'ry pore?

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

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

And stunn'd him with the mufic of the fpheres, How would he wish that Heav'n had left him ftill The whifp'ring Zephyr, and the purling rill! Who finds not Providence all good and wife, Alike in what it gives, and what denies?

Far as Creation's ample range extends, The scale of fenfual, mental pow'rs afcends: Mark how it mounts to Man's imperial race, From the green myriads in the peopled grass; 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 fagácious on the tainted green : Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood, To that which warbles through the vernal wood! The spider's touch, how exquifitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: In the nice bee, what fenfe fo fubtly true From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew!

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