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ESSAY ON MAN.

ESSAY ON MAN.

BY ALEXANDER POPE, ESQ.

EPISTLE I.

AWAKE, my ST. JOHN! leave all meaner things

To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us (fince life can little more supply
Than juft to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this fcene of Man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;

A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promifcuous

shoot;

Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.

Together let us beat this ample field,

Try what the open, what the covert yield;

The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
Of all who blindly creep, or fightless foar;

Eye Nature's walks, fhoot Folly as it flies,

And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we muft, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to Man.

I. Say firft, of God above, or Man below, What can we reafon, but from what we know:

Of Man, what fee we but his station here,

From which to reafon, or to which refer?
Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known,
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who thro' vaft immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compofe one universe,
Obferve how fyftem into fyftem runs,
What other planets circle other funs,

What vary'd being peoples every star,
May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.
But of this frame, the bearings, and the ties,
The ftrong connexions, nice dependencies,

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