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From the “Essay on Man,” Epistles I. and IV.
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, | 5 |
| Behind the cloud-topt 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. | 10 |
| 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. | |
| Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense, | 15 |
| Weigh thy opinion against Providence: | |
| Call imperfection what thou fancy’st 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,— | 20 |
| 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; | 25 |
| 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; | 30 |
| And who but wishes to invert the laws | |
| Of Order, sins against the Eternal Cause. * * * * * | |
| All are but parts of one stupendous whole, | |
| Whose body Nature is, and God the soul: | |
| That, changed through all, and yet in all the same; | 35 |
| Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame; | |
| Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, | |
| Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, | |
| Lives through all life, extends through all extent, | |
| Spreads undivided, operates unspent: | 40 |
| Breathes in our soul, 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; | 45 |
| He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all. | |
| Cease then, nor order imperfection name: | |
| Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. | |
| Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree | |
| Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee. | 50 |
| Submit.—In this or any other sphere, | |
| Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear; | |
| Safe in the hand of one disposing Power, | |
| Or in the natal or the mortal hour. | |
| All nature is but art unknown to thee; | 55 |
| All chance, direction which thou canst not see; | |
| All discord, harmony not understood; | |
| All partial evil, universal good: | |
| And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, | |
| One truth is clear—Whatever is, is right. * * * * * | 60 |
| Order is Heaven’s first law: and, this confest, | |
| Some are and must be greater than the rest, | |
| More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence | |
| That such are happier, shocks all common-sense. | |
| Heaven to mankind impartial we confess, | 65 |
| If all are equal in their happiness: | |
| But mutual wants this happiness increase; | |
| All nature’s difference keeps all nature’s peace. | |
| Condition, circumstance, is not the thing: | |
| Bliss is the same in subject or in king, | 70 |
| In who obtain defence or who defend, | |
| In him who is or him who finds a friend; | |
| Heaven breathes through every member of the whole | |
| One common blessing, as one common soul. | |
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