Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, Were there all harmony, all virtue here; That never passion discomposed the mind: But all subsists by elemental strife; And passions are the elements of life. The gen'ral Order, since the whole began, Is kept in nature, and is kept in man. 6. What would this man? Now upward will he soar, And little less than angel, would be more; To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears. Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all? Nature to these, without profusion kind, The proper organs, proper pow'rs assign'd; Each beast, each insect happy in its own; Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bless'd with all? The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find) No pow'rs of body or of soul to share, Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly. Say, what the use, were finer optics giv'n? T'inspect a mite! not comprehend the heav'n. Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore? Or quick effluvia darting thro' the brain? If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that heav'n had left him still The whisp'ring zephyr and the purling rill! Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it gives, and what denies? 7. Far as creation's ample range extends, The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends: What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme, 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, What thin partitions sense from thought divide! And middle natures, how they long to join, Subjected, these to those, or all to thee? The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone, 8. See, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick, and bursting into birth. Around, how wide! how deep extend below! Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, From thee to nothing.---On superior pow'rs D |