[9] "Better for us, I grant, it might appear, Were there all Harmony, all Virtue here; That never air or ocean felt the wind, That never passion discompos'd 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." [10] "Thus then to Man the voice of Nature spake---- 'Go, from the creatures thy instructions take: Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield; Learn from the beasts the physic of the field; Thy arts of building from the bee receive; Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave; Learn of the little nautilus to sail, Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. Here too all forms of social union find, And hence let Reason, late, instruct Mankind; Here subterranean works and cities see, There towns aerial on the waving tree. Learn each small people's genius, policies, The ant's republic, and the realm of bees; How those in common all their wealth bestow, And anarchy without confusion know; And these for ever, though a monarch reign, Their sep'rate cells and properties maintain. Mark what unvary'd laws preserv'd each state, Laws wise as nature, and as fix'd as Fate. In vain thy Reason finer webs shall draw, Intangle Justice in her net of law, And right, too rigid, harden into wrong, Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong. Yet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway; Thus let the wiser make the rest obey; And, for those arts mere Instinct could afford, Be crown'd as Monarchs, or as Gods ador'd.'" Pope's Essay on Man.-- [11] "Far as Creation's ample range extends, The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends; Mark how it mounts to Man's imperial race, From the green myriads in the peopled grass What modes of sight, betwixt each wide extreme, The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam: Of smell the head-long lioness between, And hound sagacious on the tainted green. Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood, To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood, The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line; In the nice bee what art, so subtly true, From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew; How Instinct varies in the grov'ling swine, Compar'd, half-reasoning elephant, with thine." Pope's Essay on Man.-- _FINIS._ JUVENILIA. [THE LEARNING OF LOVE.]