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And those love - darting eyes must roll no more.
Thus, if eternal Justice rules the ball,

Thus shall your wives and thus your children fall
On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates:
There passengers shall stand, and, pointing, say,
(While the long fun'rals blacken all the way)

Lo! these were they whose souls the Furies steel'd:
And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield.
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,

The gaze

of fools, and pageant of a day!

So perish all whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.

1

What can atone, (oh, ever-injur'd shade!)
Thy fate unpity'd, and thy rites unpaid?
No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear,
Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier.
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd;
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd!
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe

To midnight dances and the public show?
What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face?

What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be drest,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestrow,
There the first roses of the shall blow;
year
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy relics made.

So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
How lov'd, how honour'd once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot:

A heap of dust alone remains of thee;

'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!

Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung,

Deaf the prais'd ear, and mute the tuneful tongue:
Ev'n he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays,'
Shall shortly want the gen'rous tear he pays;
Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart;
Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,
The Muse forgot, and thou belov'd no more!

4) FROM THE ESSAY ON MAN *).

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 unnumber'd, 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 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 strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look'd 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?
Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find,
Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less?
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?
Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove?

Of systems possible, if 'tis confest,
That Wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all must fall or not coherent be,

*) Epistle I. v. 17- 130.

292

'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 Man;
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)
Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong?

Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.

In human works, though labour'd on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God's, one
one single can its end produce;
Yet serves to second too some other use.
So Man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;
"Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

When the proud steed shall know why man restrains

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:

Then shall Man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions, passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suff'ring, check'd, impell'd; 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 measur'd 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.

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, 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?,
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heaven:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

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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. Hope springs eternal in the human breast:

Man never is, but always to be blest:

The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,.
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

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;

Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topt bill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the watery waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold,
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.

Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against providence;
Call imperfection what thou fancy'st 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 ingross not heaven's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immoital, there: '
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the god of God.
In pride, in reasoning 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:

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of Order, sins against th' eternal cause.

5) THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER.
DEO OPT. MAX.

Father of All! in every age,

In every clime ador'd,

By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.

Thou great first cause, least understood;
Who all my sense-confin'd

To know but this, that thou art good,
And that myself am blind;

Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill;
And, binding nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.

What conscience dictates to be done,

Or warns me not to do, This, teach me more than hell to shun, That, more than heaven pursue.

What blessings thy free bounty gives,

Let me not cast away;

For God is paid when man receives,
Tenjoy is to obey.

Yet not to earth's contracted span
Thy goodness let me bound,
Or think thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round:

Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land,
On each I judge thy foe.

If I am right, thy grace impart,

Still in the right to stay: If I am wrong, on, teach my

To find that better way!

heart

Save me alike from foolish pride,
Or impious discontent,

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