Essay on Man | Page 5

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,
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, marked by Heaven:
Who sees
with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
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.
Hope springs
eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest:

The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a
life to come.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored 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-topped 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,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks,
admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
IV. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense,

Weigh thy opinion
against providence;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
Say,

here He gives too little, there too much;
Destroy all creatures for thy
sport or gust,
Yet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust;
If man alone
engross not Heaven's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal
there:
Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge His
justice, be the God of God.
In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;

All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at
the blest abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:

And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of order, sins against the
Eternal Cause.
V. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine,
Earth for whose use?
Pride answers, "'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 rose renew
The juice nectareous, and the balmy
dew;
For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;
For me, health
gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me
rise;
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies."
But errs not Nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when
livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests
sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
"No, ('tis
replied) the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial, but by general
laws;
The exceptions few; some change since all began;
And what
created perfect?" -- Why then man?
If the great end be human
happiness,
Then Nature deviates; and can man do less?
As much
that end a constant course requires
Of showers and sunshine, as of
man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men
for ever temperate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break
not Heaven's design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?

Who knows
but He, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and
who wings the storms;
Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind,
Or
turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
From pride, from

pride, our very reasoning springs;
Account for moral, as for natural
things:
Why charge we heaven in those, in these acquit?
In both, to
reason 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
passion discomposed the mind.
But all subsists by elemental strife;

And passions are the elements of life.
The general order, since the
whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.
VI. What would this man? Now upward will he soar,
And little less
than angel, would be more;
Now looking downwards, just as grieved
appears
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears
Made for his
use all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the powers of
all?
Nature to these, without profusion, kind,
The proper organs,
proper powers assigned;
Each seeming want compensated of course,

Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact
proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each
beast, each insect, happy in its own:
Is