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 flowery food, And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. O blindness to the future! kindly given, 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, 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 given, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, 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. What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread, Or hand, to toil, aspir'd to be the head? What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd To serve mere engines to the ruling mind? Just as absurd for any part to claim To be another, in this general frame; Just as absurd to mourn the tasks or pains The great directing Mind of All ordains. 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 the ethereal frame, Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.