HOPE humbly then, with trembling Pinions foar. Wait the great teacher Death, and God. adore. Essay on Man Ep.1.
WAKE, my ST JOHN ! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
Let us (fince Life can little more fupply
Than just to look about us, and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this fcene of Man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A Wild, where weeds and flow'rs promifcuous fhoot;
Or Garden tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield,
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
Of all who blindly creep, or fightless foar;
Eye Nature's walks, fhoot Folly as it flies,
And catch the Manners living as they rise :
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to Man
I. Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reafon but from what we know?
Of Man, what fee we but his ftation here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known,
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who thro' vaft immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compofe one universe,
Obferve how fyftem into fyftem runs,
What other planets circle other funs,
What vary'd Being peoples every star,
May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.
But of this frame the bearings and the ties,
The ftrong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations juft, 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 fupports, upheld by God, or thee?
II. Prefumptuous Man! the reafon wouldst thou find Why form'd fo weak, fo little, and fo blind? First, if thou canft, the harder reafon guess, Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less? Afk of thy mother earth, why oaks are made Taller and ftronger than the weeds they fhade? Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
And all that rifes, rife in due degree;
Then, in the fcale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,
There must be, fomewhere, fuch a rank as Man:
And all the queftion (wrangle e'er fo long)
Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong?
Refpecting 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 fearce one purpose gain;
In God's, one fingle can its end produce;
Yet ferves to fecond too fome other use.
So Man, who here ferms principal alone,
Perhaps acts fecond to fome fphere unknown,
Touches fome wheel, or verges to fome goal;
'Tis but a part we fee, and not a whole.
When the proud steed fhall know why man reftrains
His fiery courfe, 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 fhall Man's pride and dulnefs comprehend
His action's, paffion's, being's ufe and end;
Why doing, fuff'ring, check'd, impell'd; and why
This hour a flave, the next a deity.
Then fay not Man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault;
Say rather, Man's as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge meafur'd to his state and place;
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain fphere,
What matter, foon or late, or here, or there?
The bleft to-day is as completely fo,
As who began a thousand years ago.
III. Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prefcrib'd, their prefent ftate:
From brutes what men, from men what fpirits know: Or who could fuffer Being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the laft, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
In the former Editions, ver. 64.
Now wears a garland an Egyptian Goẻ,
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:
Who fees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a fparrow fall,
Atoms or fyftems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions foar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.
What future blifs, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that Hope to be thy bleffing now.
Hope fprings eternal in the human breast.
Man never Is, but always To be blest :
The foul, uneafy, and confin'd at home,
Refts and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo, the
poor Indian whofe untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His foul, proud fcience never taught to ftray
Far as the folar walk, or milky way;
Yet fimple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topt-hill, an humbler heav'n;
Some fafer world in depth of woods embrac❜d,
Some happier island in the watry waste,
After ver. 88. in the MS.
No great, no little; 'tis as much decreed
That Virgil's Gnat fhould die as Cæfar bleed.
in the first Folio and Quarto,
What blifs above he gives not thee to know,
But gives that Hope to be thy bliss below.
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