VII. Far as Creation's ample range extends, The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends: Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race, From the green myriads in the peopled grass: 210 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, To that which warbles through the vernal wood: The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew! 220 How instinct varies in the grovelling swine, Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine! 'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier: For ever separate, yet for ever near! Remembrance and reflection how allied; What thin partitions[88] sense from thought divide: And middle natures, how they long to join, Yet never pass th' insuperable line! Without this just gradation, could they be Subjected, these to those, or all to thee? 230 The powers of all subdued by thee alone, Is not thy reason all these powers in one? VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick, and bursting into birth: Above, how high progressive life may go! Around, how wide! how deep extend below! Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach; from Infinite to Thee, 240 From Thee to Nothing.--On superior powers Were we to press, inferior might on ours: Or in the full creation leave a void, Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd: From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. And, if each system in gradation roll Alike essential to th' amazing whole, The least confusion but in one, not all That system only, but the whole must fall. 250 Let earth, unbalanced, from her orbit fly, Planets and suns run lawless through the sky; Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurl'd, Being on being wreck'd, and world on world; Heaven's whole foundations to their centre nod, And Nature trembles to the throne of God. All this dread order break--for whom? for thee? Vile worm!--oh madness! pride! impiety! IX. What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread, Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head 260 What if the head, the eye, or ear repined 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.