Essay on Man-Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

NATURE 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 bleed to-day,
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas’d to the last, he crops the flow’ry food,
And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv’n,
That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heav’n;
Who sees with equal eye, as Lord 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, she 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 her 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 giv’n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, a humbler heav’n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d,
Some happier island in the watry 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 Seraphs’s fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,
And Being darkly wise, and rudely great;
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little , or too much;
Chaos of Thought and Passion all confus’d;
Still by himself abus’d or disabus’d:
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl’d:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Alexander Pope