A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms, or systems into ruin hurl'd,

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 confin'd from home,
Rests, and expatiates, in a life to come.

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Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor❜d mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;

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His soul, proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;

Yet simple nature, to his hope has giv'n

Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, an humbler heav'n,

Some safer world, in depth of woods embrac'd,

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Some happier island in the watr'y 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;

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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 fancy'st such,

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Say, here he gives too little, there too much; Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, say if man's unhappy, God's unjust,

Yet

If man, alone, engross not heav'n's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there;
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Rejudge his justice, be the God of God!
In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies;
All quit the 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;

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And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of order, sins against th' eternal cause.

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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 power,

Suckles each herb, and spreads out every 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.'

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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 reply'd) the first almighty cause

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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 sunshines, as of man's desires;
As much eternal springs, and cloudless skies,
As men forever temp'rate, calm, and wise.

If plagues or earthquakes break not heav'ns design,
Why then a Borgia or a Cataline?

Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,
Pours fierce ambition on 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 nat❜ral 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 nor ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discompos'd the mind:
But all subsists by elemental strife;

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And passions are the elements of life.

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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 soar,

And little less than angel, would be more;

Now looking downward, just as griev'd appears

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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 pow'rs assign'd;

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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:

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Is heav'n unkind to man, and man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,

Be pleas'd with nothing, if not blest with all?

The bliss of man, (could pride that blessing find)

Is, not to act, or think, BEYOND mankind;

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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,

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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 through the brain,
Die of a rose in aromatic pain?

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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

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The whispering 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 power ascends:
Mark how it mounts, to man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass!

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What modes of sight, betwixt each wide extreme,

The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:

Of smell, the headlong lioness between,

A hound sagacious on the tainted green:

Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,

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To that which warbles through 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!
How instinct varies in the grovelling swine,
Compar'd, half reas'ning elephant, with thine!
Twixt that, and reason, what a nice barrier!
Forever sep'rate, yet forever 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' inseparable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected, those to these, or all to thee?
The powers of all, subdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy reason, all these powers in one?

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VIII. See through this air, this ocean, and this earth,

All matter quick, and bursting into birth.

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Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Natures etherial, 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;

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