And hail with music its propitious ray.
This the blest lover shall for Venus take,
And send up vows from Rosamonda's lake.9
This Partridge10 soon shall view in cloudless
skies,
When next he looks through Galileo's eyes;
And hence th' egregious wizard shall foredoom
The fate of Louis and the fall of Rome. 140
Then cease, bright nymph! to mourn thy ravished hair,
Which adds new glory to the shining sphere!
Not all the tresses that fair head can boast,
Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost.
For, after all the murders of your eye,
When, after millions slain, yourself shall die;
When those fair suns shall set, as set they
Awake, my St. John!1 leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us, since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die,
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous
shoot;
Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield; 10
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye nature's walks, shoot 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 reason, but from what we know?
Of man, what see we but his station here
From which to reason or to which refer?
Through worlds unnumbered though the God
be known,
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied being peoples every star,
May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.
But of this frame the bearings, and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Looked through? or can
a part contain the
whole?
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree, And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee? II. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst
Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind? First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less? Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?
1 Henry St. John. Lord Bolingbroke, a politician and philosopher to whom Pope was indebted The name is for the substance of this poem. usually pronounced Sin jun.
41 That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven:
Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove.
Of systems possible, if 'tis confessed
That wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all must full or not coherent be,
And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then, in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain,
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as
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
Some safer world in depths of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land be-
hold
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:2
Then shall man's pride and dullness compre- No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for
hend
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.
To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; 110
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
IV. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of
Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
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,
III. Heaven from all creatures hides the Alone made perfect here, immortal there, book of fate,
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, All but the page prescribed, their present state: Re-judge his justice, be the god of God. From brutes3 what men, from men what In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies; All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. 80 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: And who but wishes to invert the laws Of order, sins against the Eternal Cause. V. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine,
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,
2 Apis. the sacred bull 3 Supply "heaven hides."
of Egypt.
Pope's verse is full
of such ellipses.
Earth for whose use? Pride answers,
""Tis And little less than angel, would be more; Now looking downwards, just as grieved ap
For me kind nature wakes her genial power, Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower;
Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew
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?
No ('tis replied), the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial, but by general laws;
Th' 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 forever temperate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design,
Why then a Borgia,5 or a Catiline fo
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 reasoning 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.
The general order, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.
VI. What would this man?
will he soar,
5 Cesare Borgia, son of
Pope Alexander VI.,
a notorious criminal
and tyrant.
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 assigned; 180
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:
Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with
all?
The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
No powers of body or of soul to share,
But what his nature and his state can bear.
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, man is not a fly.
Say what the use, were finer optics given.
T' 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?
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam: Of smell, the headlong lioness between And hound sagacious on the tainted green: Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood, 170 To that which warbles through the vernal wood:
6 Roman conspirator.
7 Alexander the Great. who was flatteringly styled the son of Jupiter Ammon.
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
8 Music, too fine or too mighty for mortal ears, supposed to be made by the revolution of the concentric spheres which, according to the old Ptolemaic system, composed the universe. (See note on Doctor Faustus, p. 158.)
From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew? How instinct varies in the groveling swine, 221 Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine! "Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier, Forever separate, yet forever near! Remembrance and reflection how allied;
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 th' ethereal frame; 270 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
What thin partitions sense from thought di- Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, vide:
And middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th' insuperable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?
The powers of all subdued by thee alone,
Is not thy reason all these powers in one?
VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, and
this earth
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high, progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from infinite to thee, 240
From thee to nothing.-On superior powers
Were we to press, inferior might10 on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Lives through all life, extends through all ex
Where, one step broken, the great scale's de- All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Go, wondrous creature; mount where science
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the Destroying others, by himself destroyed.
tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old Time, and regulate the sun;1
Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,2
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God;
As eastern priests in giddy circles run,3
And turn their heads to imitate the sun.
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule-
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!
Most strength the moving principle requires;
Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires:
Sedate and quiet, the comparing lies,
Formed but to check, deliberate, and advise. 70
Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh;
Reason's at distance and in prospect lie:
That sees immediate good by present sense;
Reason, the future and the consequence.
Thicker than arguments, temptations throng,
At best more watchful this, but that more
The action of the stronger to suspend,
Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal man unfold all nature's law,
Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And showed a Newton, as we show an ape.
Could he, whose rules the rapid comet bind,
Describe or fix one movement of his mind?
Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend,
Explain his own beginning or his end?
Alas! what wonder! Man's superior part
Unchecked may rise, and climb from art to Wits, just like fools, at war about a name,
Reason still use, to reason still attend.
Attention, habit and experience gains;
Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains.
Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to
fight,
More studious to divide than to unite;
And grace and virtue, sense and reason split,
With all the rash dexterity of wit.
Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.
Self-love and reason to one end aspire,
Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire;
But greedy that, its object would devour,
This taste the honey, and not wound the
flower:
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.
III. Modes of self-love the passions we
may call;
'T is real good, or seeming, moves them all:
But since not every good we can divide,
Which served the past, and must the times to And reason bids us for our own provide,
come!
II. Two principles in human nature reign;
Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain;
Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call,
Each works its end to move or govern all:
And to their proper operation still
Ascribe all good; to their improper, ill.
Self-love, the spring of motion, acts
soul;
Passions, though selfish, if their means be fair,
List under reason, and deserve her care;
Those that imparted, court a nobler aim,
Exalt their kind, and take some virtue's name.
In lazy apathy let stoics boast
Their virtue fixed: 't is fixed as in a frost;
Contracted all, retiring to the breast;
the But strength of mind is exercise, not rest:
The rising tempest puts in act the soul,
Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale;
Nor God alone in the still calm we find,
He mounts the storm, and walks upon the
wind.
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that, no action could attend,
And, but for this, were active to no end:
Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro' the void,
1 Alluding to the reformation of the calendar,
which had fallen some twelve days behind
the sun-a reformation then already generally
adopted in Europe, though not in England till
1751.
2 Compare note on I. 202. (Bolingbroke held Plato
in contempt.)
The dancing dervishes.
4 actuates, moves
|