الله And tastes the good without the fall to ill; See the sole bliss heaven could on all bestow! Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know: Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind, The bad must miss, the good, untaught, will find; Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through nature up to nature's God: Pursues that chain which links th' immense design, 6 Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine; to on Happ And Learns from this union of the rising whole, The first, last purpose of the human soul; God And knows where faith, law, morals, all began, Hus All end in love of God and love of man. Self For him alone hope leads from goal to goal, As The 'Til lengthen'd on to faith, and unconfin'd, It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind. An Fr He sees why nature plants in man alone His 4 Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown: W (Nature, whose dictates to no other kind T Are given in vain, but what they seek they find) E Wise is her present; she connects in this A His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss; Self-love thus push'd to social, to divine, Gives thee to make thy neighbor's blessing thine. Is this too little for the boundless heart? Extend it, let thy enemies have part: Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life and sense, C ( In one close system of benevolence; And height of bliss but height of charity. 5 God loves from whole to parts: but human soul Come then, my friend! my genius come along; Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, 1 Oh! while along the stream of time thy name Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame; Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale? When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose, Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes, Shall then this verse to future age pretend Thou wert my guide, philosopher and friend? That, urg'd by thee, I turn'd the tuneful art From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart; For wit's false mirror held up nature's light; Shew'd erring pride, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT; That Reason, Passion, answer one great aim; That true Self-love and Social are the same; That VIRTUE Only makes our bliss below; And all our knowledge iş, OURSELVES TO KNOW. THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER.* DEO OPT. MAX. FATHER of All! in ev'ry age, Thou great First Cause, least understood Yet gave me in this dark estate, * It may be proper to observe, that some passages in the preceding Essay, having been unjustly suspected of a tendency towards fate and naturalism, the author composed this prayer as the sum of all, to show that his system was founded in free-will and terminated in piety; that the first Cause was as well the Lord and Governor of the universe, as the Creator of it; and that, by submission to his will (the great principle enforced throughout this essay) was not meant the suffering ourselves to be carried along by a blind determination, but the resting in a religions acquiescence, and confidence full of hope and immortality. To give all this the greater weight, the poet chose for his model the Lord's prayer, which of all others best deserves the title prefixed to his paraphrase. |