| |
| AWAKE, my St. John! leave all meaner things | |
| To low ambition, and the pride of kings. | |
| Let us (since life can little more supply | |
| Than just to look about us, and to die) | |
| Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man; | 5 |
| A mighty maze! but not without a plan; | |
| A wild, where weeds and flow’rs promiscuous shoot; | |
| Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. | |
| Together let us beat this ample field, | |
| Try what the open, what the covert yield! | 10 |
| The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore | |
| Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar; | |
| Eye nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies, | |
| And catch the manners living as they rise: | |
| Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; | 15 |
| But vindicate the ways of God to man. | |
| I. Say first, of God above, or man below, | |
| What can we reason, but from what we know? | |
| Of man, what see we but his station here, | |
| From which to reason, or to which refer? | 20 |
| Thro’ worlds unnumber’d tho’ the God be known, | |
| ’Tis ours to trace him only in our own. | |
| He, who thro’ vast immensity can pierce, | |
| See worlds on worlds compose one universe, | |
| Observe how system into system runs, | 25 |
| What other planets circle other suns. | |
| What vary’d being peoples every star, | |
| May tell why heav’n has made us as we are. | |
| But of this frame the bearings and the ties, | |
| The strong connections, nice dependencies, | 30 |
| Gradations just, has thy pervading soul | |
| Look’d thro’ or can a part contain the whole? | |
| Is the great chain, that draws all to agree, | |
| And drawn support, upheld by God, or thee? | |
| II. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find, | 35 |
| Why form’d so weak, so little, and so blind? | |
| First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, | |
| Why form’d no weaker, blinder, and no less? | |
| Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made | |
| Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade? | 40 |
| Or ask of yonder argent fields above, | |
| Why Jove’s Satellites are less than Jove? | |
| Of systems possible, if ’tis confest | |
| That wisdom infinite must form the best, | |
| Where all must full or not coherent be, | 45 |
| And all that rises, rise in due degree; | |
| Then, in the scale of reas’ning life, ’tis plain, | |
| There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man: | |
| And all the question (wrangle e’er so long) | |
| Is only this, if God has plac’d him wrong? | 50 |
| Respecting man whatever wrong we call, | |
| May, must be right, as relative to all. | |
| In human works, tho’ labour’d on with pain, | |
| A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain; | |
| In God’s, one single can its end produce; | 55 |
| Yet serves to second too some other use. | |
| So man, who here seems principal alone, | |
| Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, | |
| Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; | |
| ’Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. | 60 |
| When the proud steed shall know why man restrains | |
| His fiery course, or drives him o’er the plains; | |
| When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, | |
| Is now a victim, and now Ægypt’s god: | |
| Then shall man’s pride and dullness comprehend | 65 |
| His actions’, passions’, being’s, use and end; | |
| Why doing, suff’ring, check’d, impell’d; and why | |
| This hour a slave, the next a deity. | |
| Then say not man’s imperfect, heav’n in fault; | |
| Say rather, man’s as perfect as he ought: | 70 |
| His knowledge measur’d to his state and place; | |
| His time a moment, and a point his space. | |
| If to be perfect in a certain sphere, | |
| What matter, soon or late, or here or there? | |
| The blest to-day is as completely so, | 75 |
| As who began a thousand years ago. | |
| III. Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of fate, | |
| All but the page prescrib’d, their present state: | |
| From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: | |
| Or who could suffer being here below? | 80 |
| The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, | |
| Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? | |
| Pleas’d to the last, he crops the flow’ry food, | |
| And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood. | |
| Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv’n, | 85 |
| That each may full the circle mark’d by heav’n: | |
| Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, | |
| A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, | |
| Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d, | |
| And now a bubble burst, and now a world. | 90 |
| 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: | 95 |
| Man never is, but always to be blest: | |
| The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home, | |
| Rests and expatiates in a life to come. | |
| Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind | |
| Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; | 100 |
| 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-topt hill, an humbler heav’n; | |
| Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d, | 105 |
| Some happier island in the wat’ry 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; | 110 |
| 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, | 115 |
| 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; | |
| If man alone ingross not Heav’n’s high care, | |
| Alone made perfect here, immortal there: | 120 |
| Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, | |
| Re-judge his justice, be the God of God. | |
| In pride, in reas’ning pride, our error lies; | |
| All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. | |
| Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes | 125 |
| Men would be angels, angels would be gods. | |
| Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell, | |
| Aspiring to be angels, men rebel: | |
| And who but wishes to invert the laws | |
| Of order, sins against th’ eternal cause. | 130 |
| 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 | 135 |
| 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 foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies.’ | 140 |
| 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 | 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? | 150 |
| 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 temp’rate, calm, and wise. | |
| If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav’n’s design, | 155 |
| 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? | 160 |
| 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, | 165 |
| 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. | 170 |
| 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 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; | 180 |
| Each seeming want compensated of course, | |
| Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force; | |
| All in exact proportion to the state; | |
| Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. | |
| Each beast, each insect, happy in its own: | 185 |
| 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; | 190 |
| 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, | 195 |
| 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? | 200 |
| 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, | 205 |
| 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: | 210 |
| 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, | 215 |
| 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: | 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; | 225 |
| 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? | 230 |
| 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! | 235 |
| Around, how wide! how deep extend below! | |
| Vast chain of being! which from God began, | |
| Natures æthereal, human, angel, man, | |
| Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, | |
| No glass can reach; from infinite to thee, | 240 |
| From thee to nothing. On superior pow’rs | |
| Were we to press, inferior might on ours; | |
| Or in the full creation leave a void, | |
| From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike, | |
| Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. | 245 |
| 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, | 250 |
| 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, | |
| And nature tremble to the throne of God. | 255 |
| All this dread order break—for whom? for thee? | |
| Vile worm!—oh madness! pride! impiety! | |
| IX. What if the foot, ordain’d the dust to tread, | |
| Or hand, to toil, aspir’d to be the head? | |
| What if the head, the eye, or ear repin’d | 260 |
| To serve mere engines to the ruling mind? | |
| Just as absurd for any part to claim | |
| To be another, in this gen’ral frame; | |
| Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains | |
| The great directing mind of all ordains. | 265 |
| All are but parts of one stupendous whole, | |
| Whose body nature is, and God the soul; | |
| That, chang’d thro’ all, and yet in all the same, | |
| Great in the earth, as in th’ æthereal frame, | |
| Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, | 270 |
| Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, | |
| Lives thro’ all life, extends thro’ all extent, | |
| Spreads undivided, operates unspent; | |
| Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, | |
| As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; | 275 |
| 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. | |
| Cease then, nor order imperfection name: | 280 |
| Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. | |
| Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree | |
| Of blindness, weakness, Heav’n bestows on thee. | |
| Submit. In this, or any other sphere, | |
| Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear: | 285 |
| Safe in the hand of one disposing pow’r, | |
| Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. | |
| All nature is but art, unknown to thee; | |
| All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; | |
| All discord, harmony not understood; | 290 |
| All partial evil, universal good. | |
| And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, | |
| One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. | |
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