What different views above and underneath! From one, the silken pear cleaves through the cloud, And floats, beyond your vision, in the blue, And franchised Man no longer wears Earth’s chain; The other sees him drifting o’er the ground, Beneath the level of the hills around, The captive still of watchful gravity. Upon yon strip of land, two insect swarms Are drawn up, front to front, in serried lines; These are the armies, ’neath whose trampling tread The very Earth doth tremble, now they join In dreadful conflict. From the battling ranks Leap tiny bits of flame, and puffs of smoke, Where thundering cannon belch their carnage forth; The heated missile cleaves its sparkling way, The screaming shell its smoke-traced curve; the sword Gleams redly with the varnish of its blood, The bayonets like ripples on a lake. How palsied every arm, how still each heart! If one discharge of Heaven’s artillery roared Above their heads--not that faint mutter thou Perchance hast heard from some electric cloud, But when a meteor curves immensity, And bursts in glittering fragments that would dash Thy world an atom from their path. But God Hath thrown the blanket of His atmosphere Around the Earth, and shield, it from the jar Of pealing salvos, that reverberate Through Heaven’s illimitable dome. Yet thou, The meanest of thy race of worms, hast dared To question God’s designs. Know then that He Ordains that all, His glory shall work out. The coral architect beneath the wave Doth magnify Him, as the burning sun That lights a thousand worlds. His power directs The mechanism of a Universe, Whose vastness thou hast been allowed to see, And yet the mottled sparrow in the hedge Falls not without His notice. Magnitude Is not the seal of power, though man thinks so; The least brown feather of the sparrow’s wing, In adaptation to its end displays God’s wisdom, as the ocean. Harmony Is Heaven’s watchword, key to all designs. A tendency towards perfection’s end Pervades Creation; to this perfect end, The polity Divine is leading Earth. Endowed with reason, Man, perforce, is free; And God, forseeing how he’ll freely act, Adjusts all circumstance accordingly. The order of this sequence, Man doth learn In part; adapts himself to these fixed laws; And thus is formed a general harmony. Although the individual may oppose, His forseen freedom, acting in a net Of circumstance, secures the wished-for end. The bloodiest wars are sources of great good, Invasive floods rouse national energies, Or, mingling, form a greater people still; Hume’s skepticism foils its own design, And rouses lusty champions of the Truth, Who build its walls far stronger than before.