III. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer being here below? 80 The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood. Oh 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. 90 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 confined 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; 100 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-topp'd 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; 110 But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company. IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense, Weigh thy opinion against Providence; Call imperfection what thou fanciest 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 engross not Heaven's high care, Alone made perfect here, immortal there: 120 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 the Eternal Cause. 130 V. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, Earth for whose use? Pride answers, ''Tis for mine: For me kind Nature wakes her genial power, Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; Annual for me the grape, the rose renew, The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings; For me, health gushes from a thousand springs; Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.' 140