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 Egypt's god;
Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled, and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.
Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault;
Say rather man's as perfect as he ought;
His knowledge measured 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
As who began a thousand years ago.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescribed their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know; Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Oh! blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
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 confined, from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
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
Behind the cloud-topped 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.
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.
THE DUTY OF MAN TO BE CONTENT WITH THE RANK WHICH HE HOLDS IN CREATION.
Were we to press, inferior might on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed:
From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth, or ten-thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
What if the foot ordained the dust to tread,
Or hand to toil, aspired to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear, repined
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another in this general frame;
Just as absurd to mourn the tasks, or pains,
The great directing Mind of All ordains.
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,
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 ;
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;
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.
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.
Al nature is but art unknown to thee;
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.
THE WISDOM OF PROVIDENCE DISPLAYED EVEN IN THE
WEAKNESSES OF MEN.
Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age:
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before,
Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er.
Meanwhile opinion gilds with varying rays
Those painted clouds that beautify our days;
Each want of happiness by hope supplied,
And each vacuity of sense by pride:
These build as fast as knowledge can destroy ;
In folly's cup still laughs the bubble joy;
One prospect lost, another still we gain,
And not a vanity is given in vain :
Even mean self-love becomes, by force divine,
The scale to measure others' wants by thine.
See! and confess one comfort still must rise;
"T is this,―Though man's a fool, yet God is wise.
MAN NOT THE ONLY BEING WHOSE HAPPINESS WAS TO
Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him has kindly spread the flowery lawn:
Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?-
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
The bounding steed you pompously bestride,
Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.
Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?-
The birds of Heaven shall vindicate their grain.
Thine the full harvest of the golden year? -
Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer.
The hog, that ploughs not, nor obeys thy call,
Lives on the labours of this lord of all.
Know Nature's children all divide her care;
The fur that warms a monarch warmed a bear.
While man exclaims, "See all things for my use!"
"See man for mine!" replies a pampered goose:
And just as short of reason he must fall,
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.
Man, like the generous vine, supported lives;
The strength he gains is from the embrace he gives On their own axis as the planets run,
Yet make at once their circle round the sun;
So two consistent motions acts the soul,
And one regards itself, and one the whole.
Thus God and Nature linked the general frame,
And bade self-love and social be the same.
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