Where flaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Chriftians thirst for gold.
To Be, contents his natural defire,

He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog fhall bear him company.

IV. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy Opinion against Providence ;
Call imperfection what thou fancy'ft fuch,
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 ingrofs not Heav'n's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there :
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his juftice, be the GoD of GOD.

In Pride, in reas'ning Pride, our error lies;

110

115

120

All quit their fphere, and rush into the skies.

Pride ftill is aiming at the bleft abodes,

125

Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods.

Afpiring to be Gods, if Angels fell,

Afpiring to be Angels, Men rebel :

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of ORDER, fins against th' Eternal Cause.

130

After ver. 118. in the first Edition.

But does he fay the Maker is not good,
Till he's exalted to what state he wou'd :
Himself alone high heav'n's peculiar care,
Alone made happy when he will; and where?

V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, Earth for whofe ufe? Pride anfvers, " '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 rofè renew

« The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
"For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;
“For me health guthes from a thousand springs;

Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; “My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies.

135

149

145

But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning funs when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes fwallow, or when tempefts fweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? "No ('tis reply'd) the firft Almighty Caufe "Acts not by Partial, but by genʼral laws;"Th' exceptions faw; fome change fince all began: “And what created perfect?"-Why then Man? If the great end be human Happiness,

Then Nature deviates; and can Man do lefs? 150
As much that end a conftant courfe requires
Of fhow'rs and fun-fhine, as of Man's defires;
As much eternal fprings and cloudless kics,
As men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wife.

If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's defign,
Why then a Borgia, or a Cataline?

156 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 loofe to fcourge mankind?

159

From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning fprings;
Account for moral as for natʼral things:

Why charge we Heaven in thofe, in these acquit?

In both, to reafon right, is to fubmit.

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;

165

And paffions are the elements of life.

170

The gen'ral ORDER, fince the whole began,

Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Min.

VI. What would this Man? Now upward will he foar, And little less than Angel, would be more;

Now looking downwards, juft as griev'd appears 175
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his ufe all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all;
Nature to thefe, without profufion, kind,
The proper organs, proper pow'rs affign'd;
Each feeming want compenfated of course,
Here with degrees of fwiftnefs, there of force;

180

VER. 169, But all fubfifts, etc.] See this fubject extended in E. ii. from ver. co to 112, 155, etc.

VER. 182 Here with degrees of fwiftness, etc.] It is a certain axiom in the anatomy of creatures, that in proportion as they are formed for ftrength, their swiftnefs is leffened; or as they are formed for fwiftness, their strength is abated.

All in exact proportion to the state;

Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each infect, happy in its own :
Is Heav'n 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 bleffing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;

185

199

No pow'rs of body, or of foul to fhare,

But what his nature and his ftate can bear.

Why has not Man a microscopic eye?

For this plain reason, man is not a Fly.

Say what the ufe, were finer optics giv'n,
T'inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n ?
The touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To fmart and agonize at ev'ry pore?
Or quick effluvia darting thro' the brain,

Dye of a rofe in aromatic pain?

If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,

And stunn'd him with the mufic of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heav'n had left him ftill
The whifp'ring 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 scale of fenfual, mental pow'rs ascends :
Mark how it mounts to Man's imperial race,

195

200

205

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 :

210

Of smell, the headlong lioness 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 pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?
How Inftinct varies in the grov'ling fwine,
Compar'd, half reas'ning elephant, with thine!
'Twixt that and Reason, what a nice barrier?
For ever fep'rate, yet for ever near!

Remembrance and Reflection how ally'd;

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, these to thofe, or all to thee?
The pow'rs of all fubdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy reafon all these pow'rs in one?

215

220

225

230

VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,

All matter quick, and bursting into birth.

VER. 213. The headlong lioness] The manner of the lions hunting their prey in the Deferts of Africa is this: At their first going out in the night-time they fet up a loud roar, and then liften to the noife made by the beafts in their flight, pursuing them by the ear, and not by the noftril. It is probable, the story of the jackal's hunting for the lion, was occafioned by obferva tion of this defe of rent in that terrible animal.