If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's defign, Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?
Who knows, but he whofe hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the ftorms; Pours fierce Ambition in a Cæfar's mind,
Or turns young Ammon loose to fcourge mankind? 160
From pride, from pride, our very reafoning fprings;
Account for moral as for natural things:
Why charge we Heaven in thofe, in these acquit?
In both, to reafon 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 paffion difcompos'd the mind.
But all fubfifts by elemental ftrife;
And paffions are the elements of Life.
The general Order, fince the whole began,
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.
VI. What would this Man? Now upward will he foar, And, little less than Angel, would be more;
Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears 175
To want the ftrength of bulls, the fur of bears,
Made for his ufe all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the powers of all?
Nature to thefe, without profufion, kind,
The proper organs, proper powers affign'd;
Each feeming want compenfated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftnefs, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the ftate;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
D 2
Each beaft, each infect, happy in its own:
Is Heaven unkind to Man, and Man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bleft with all?
The blifs of Man (could Pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
No powers of body or of foul to share,
But what his nature and his ftate can bear.
Why has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reafon, Man is not a Fly.
Say what the ufe, were finer optics given,
T' infpect a mite, not comprehend the heaven?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To smart and agonize at every pore?
Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,
Die of a rofe in aromatic pain?
If nature thunder'd in his opening ears,
And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heaven had left him still
The whispering Zephyr, and the purling rill!
Who finds not Providence all good and wife,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies?
VII. Far as Creation's ample range extends,
The fcale of fenfual, mental powers afcends :
Mark how it mounts to Man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grafs ;
What modes of fight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam :
Of smell, the headlong lionefs between,
And hound fagacious on the tainted green :
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
To that which warbles through the vernal wood?
The fpider's touch, how exquifitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what fenfe fo fubtly true
From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew:
How Inftinct varies in the groveling swine,
Compar'd, half-reafoning elephant, with thine!
"Twixt that, and Reafon, what a nice barrier!
For ever feparate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and Reflection how allied;
What thin partitions Senfe from Thought divide!
And Middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th' infuperable line!
Without this juft gradation, could they be
Subjected, thefe to thofe, or all to thee?
The powers of all fubdued by thee alone,
Is not thy Reafon all these powers in one?
VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, and this
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high, progreffive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vaft chain of being! which from God began,
Natures æthereal, human, angel, man,
Beaft, bird, fith, infect, what no eye can fee,
No glafs can reach; from Infinite to thee,
Ethereal effence, fpirit, fubftance, man.
From thee to Nothing.-On fuperior powers
Were we to prefs, 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 ftrike,
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
And, if each fyftem in gradation roll
Alike effential to th' amazing Whole,
The leaft confufion but in one, not all
That fyftem only, but the Whole muft fall.
Let Earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,
Planets and Suns run lawless through the sky;
Let ruling Angels from their fpheres be hurl'd,
Being on Being wreck'd, and world on world;
Heaven's whole foundations to their centre nod,
And Nature trembles 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, ordain'd the duft to tread,
Or hand, to toil, afpir'd to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear, repin'd
To ferve mere engines to the ruling Mind?
Just as abfurd for any part to claim
To be another, in this general frame:
Juft as abfurd, to mourn the tasks or pains
The great directing Mind of all ordains.
All are but parts of one ftupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the foul; That, chang'd through all, and yet in all the fame; Great in the earth, as in th' æthereal frame ;
Warms in the fun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and bloffoms in the trees,
Lives through all life, extends through all extent;
Spreads undivided, operates unfpent;
Breathes in our foul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
X. Cease then, nor Order Imperfection name :
Our proper blifs depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weaknefs, Heaven beftows on thee.
Submit. In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as bleft as thou canft bear:
Safe in the hand of one difpofing Power,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not fee; 290 All Discord, Harmony not understood :
All partial Evil, universal Good.
And, fpite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.
After ver. 282. in the MS.
Reafon, to think of God, when the pretends,
Begins a Cenfor, an Adorer ends.
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