V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, Earth for whose use? Pride answers, " Tis for mine: "For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow'r, "Suckles each herb and spreads out ev'ry flow'r ; "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," it's reply'd; "the first almighty Cause 145 "Acts not by partial but by gen'ral laws;
"Th' 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 show'rs and sunshine as of Man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men for ever tempʼrate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n'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 Cæsar's mind,
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral as for natʼral things:
Why charge we Heav'n 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 discompos'd the mind:
But all subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
The gen❜ral order, since the whole began,
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.
VI. What would this Man? Now upward will he And little less than angel, would be more;
Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears 175
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 pow'rs of all?
Nature to these without profusion kind,
The proper organs proper pow'rs assign'd;
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to their state :
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, 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 bless'd with all?
The bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find,)
Is not to act or think beyond Mankind;
No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,
But what his Nature and his state can bear.
Why has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a fly.
Say what the use were finer optics giv❜n,
T'inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?
Or quick effluvia darting thro' the brain,
Die of a rose in aromatic pain?
If Nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,
And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heav'n had left him still
The whisp'ring zephyr and the purling rill?
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what it gives and what denies ?
VII. Far as creation's ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental, pow'rs ascends:
Mark how it mounts to Man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass :
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain and the lynx's beam?
Of smell the headlong lioness between
And hound sagacious on the tainted green?
Of hearing from the life that fills the flood
To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood?
The spider's touch how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee what sense so subtly true,
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew! 220
How instinct varies in the grov❜ling swine
Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine!
'Twixt that and reason what a nice barrier!
For ever sep❜rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and reflection how ally'd!
What thin partitions sense from thought divide!
And middle natures how they long to join,
Yet never pass th' insuperable line !
Without this just gradation could they be
Subjected these to those, or all to thee?
The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy reason all these pow'rs in one?
VIII. See thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, Man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from infinite to thee;
From thee to nothing.-On superior pow'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd:
From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, 245
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
And if each system in gradation roll
Alike essential to th' amazing whole,
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,
Planets and suns run lawless thro' the sky;
Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurl'd,
Being on being wreck'd, and world on world;
Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod, 255
And Nature tremble to the throne of God:
All this dread order break-for whom? for thee?
Vile worm!-oh, madness! pride! impiety!
IX. What if the foot, crdain'd the dust to tread,
Or hand to toil, aspir'd to be the head?
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