Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

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.

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.5
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.

6

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor❜d 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;

100

Yet simple nature to his hope has given,

Behind the cloud-topp'd 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,

105

No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To Be, contents his natural desire,7

110

He asks no angel's wings, no seraph's fire;

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

4 After ver. 88, in the MS.

"No great, no little; 'tis as much decreed

That Virgil's gnat should die as Cæsar bleed."

5 [Warburton says in the first folio and quarto, these lines were"What bliss above he gives not thee to know,

But gives that hope to be thy bliss below."

Pope, however, had soon altered them to their present form, for they appear as above in the editions of 1735.]

6 [In all the early editions, "confined at home." Warburton is said to have suggested the change.]

7 After ver. 108, in the first edition :

"But does he say the Maker is not good,
Till he 's exalted to what state he would;
Himself alone high Heaven's peculiar care,
Alone made happy when he will, and where?"

IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against Providence ;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest 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 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 reas'ning pride, our error lies;
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 :

120

125

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of Order, sins against the Eternal Cause.8

130

V. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine

Earth for whose use? Pride answers, ""Tis for mine:
For me kind Nature wakes her genial power,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev'ry flower;
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 footstool 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?

145

"No ('tis replied), the first Almighty Cause Acts not by partial, but by genʼral laws;

8 [Warburton quotes the following illustration ;-"While comets move in very eccentric orbs, in all manner of positions, blind Fate could never make all the planets move one and the same way in orbs concentric; some inconsiderable irregularities excepted, which may have risen from the mutual actions of comets and planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase till this system wants a reformation."-Sir Isaac Newton's Optics, Quest. ult.]

[graphic]

"FROM BURNING SUNS, WHEN LIVID DEATHS DESCEND."

The 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?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of showers and sunshine, as of man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men for ever temperate, calm, and wise.

150

If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline ?

155

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 natural things:
Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason 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 passion discomposed the mind.
But all subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.

165

170

The general 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 grieved 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 powers of all?
Nature to these, without profusion, kind,
The proper organs, proper powers assign'd;
Each seeming want compensated of course,

180

Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force; 9
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:

185

Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone?

Shall he alone, whom rational we call,

Be pleased 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 powers of body or of soul to share,

But what his nature and his state can bear.

Why has not man a microsopic eye?

For this plain reason, man is not a fly.

Say what the use, were finer optics given,

195

To inspect 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 rose in aromatic pain?

200

If Nature thunder'd in his opening ears,

And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,

9 It is a certain axiom in the anatomy of creatures, that, in proportion as they are formed for strength, their swiftness is lessened; or as they are formed for swiftness, their strength is abated.

How would he wish that Heaven had left him still
The whisp'ring zephyr, and the purling rill?
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies?

205

[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

VII. Far as creation's ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends :
Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass :
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between, 10
And hound sagacious on the tainted green:

210

10 The manner of the lions hunting their prey in the deserts of Africa is this-At their first going out in the night-time they set up a loud roar, and then listen to the noise made by the beasts in their flight, pursuing them by the ear, and not by the nostril. It is probable that the story of the jackal's hunting for the lion, was occasioned by observation of this defect of scent in that terrible animal.

« AnteriorContinuar »