Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suff'ring, checked, impelled; 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:
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 bless'd to-day is as completely so,

As who began a thousand years ago.

III

Heav'n 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 flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
O blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill 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 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 blessed.

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 giv'n,

65

Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,

70

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.

75

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION

JAMES THOMSON

1700-1748

FROM WINTER

THE keener tempests come; and fuming dun
From all the livid east, or piercing north,
Thick clouds ascend; in whose capacious womb
A vapory deluge lies, to snow congealed.
Heavy they roll their fleecy world along;

And the sky saddens with the gathered storm.
Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes

Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter-robe of purest white.

'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low, the woods
Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,
Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,
In one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
The work of man. Drooping, the laborer-ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around

The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves.

His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights

On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,

And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is;
Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset

By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the black heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.
Now, shepherds, to your helpless charge be kind;
Baffle the raging year, and fill their pens

With food at will; lodge them below the storm,
And watch them strict: for, from the bellowing east,
In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing
Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains.
In one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks,
Hid in the hollow of two neighboring hills,
The billowy tempest whelms; till, upward urged,
The valley to a shining mountain swells,

Tipped with a wreath high-curling in the sky.

RULE, BRITANNIA

WHEN Britain first, at Heaven's command,

Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang the strain.

The nations, not so blest as thee,

Must in their turns, to tyrants fall;
Whilst thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
'Rule,' etc.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,

More dreadful from each foreign stroke; As the loud blast that tears the skies

Serves but to root thy native oak. 'Rule,' etc.

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
And work their woe, and thy renown.
'Rule,' etc.

To thee belongs the rural reign;

ΙΟ

15

Thy cities shall with commerce shine;

20

All thine shall be the subject main; And every shore it circles, thine! ' Rule,' etc.