Helpless immortal! Insect infinite!

A worm! a god!

I tremble at myself,

And in myself am lost! At home, a stranger.
Thought wanders up and down, surpris'd, aghast;
And wond'ring at her own: how reason reels!
O what a miracle to man is man.

Triumphantly distress'd; what joy, what dread!
Alternately transported, and alarm'd!

What can preserve my life, or what destroy?
An Angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave,
Legions of Angels can't confine me there.

All; all on earth is shadow, all beyond
Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed:
How solid all, where change shall be no more.

Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts,
Inters celestial hopes without one sigh,
Pris'ner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes; winged by heaven
To fly at Infinite; and reach it there
Where Seraphs gather immortality

On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God.
What golden joys ambrosial clust'ring glow
In his full beam, and ripen for the just!
Where momentary ages are no more!

Where time and pain and chance and death expire!
And is it in the flight of three-score years
To push Eternity from human thought,
And smother souls immortal in the dust?
A soul immortal, spending all her fires,
Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptur'd or alarm'd
At aught this scene can threaten or indulge,
Resembles ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.

POPE.-BORN 1688; DIED 1744.

EXTRACTS FROM THE ESSAY ON MAN.

CEASE then, nor order imperfection name.
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee:
Submit,-in this or any other sphere,

Secure to be as bless'd as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing Power,
Or in the natal or the mortal hour.

All Nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;

And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.

Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great;
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hang's 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 reasoning 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 abused or disabus'd;
Created half to rise or half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Know, then, this truth (enough for man to know) Virtue alone is happiness below,"

66

The only point where human bliss stands still,
And tastes the good without the fall to ill;
Where only merit constant pay receives,
Is bless'd in what it takes, and what it gives;
The joy unequall'd if its end it gain,
And, if it lose, attended with no pain:
Without satiety, though e'er so bless'd,
And but more relish'd as the more distress'd:
The broadest mirth unfeeling folly wears,
Less pleasing far than virtue's very tears:
Good, from each object, from each place acquired,
For ever exercised, yet never tired;

Never elated, while one man's oppress'd;
Never dejected, while another's bless'd:

And, where no wants, no wishes can remain,
Since but to wish more Virtue is to gain.

THE PARTING OF HECTOR AND
ANDROMACHE.

The Iliad.-Book VI.

"Too daring prince! ah! whither dost thou run ? Ah! too forgetful of thy wife and son!

And think'st thou not how wretched we shall be,
A widow I, an helpless orphan he!

For sure such courage length of life denies,
And thou must fall thy virtue's sacrifice.
Greece in her single heroes strove in vain :
New hosts oppose thee, and thou must be slain!
O grant me, gods! ere Hector meets his doom,
All I can ask of Heaven, an early tomb.

"So shall my days in one sad tenor run, And end with sorrows as they first begun. No parent now remains my grief to share, No father's aid, no mother's tender care. Yet while my Hector still survives, I see My father, mother, brethren, all in thee: Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all Once more will perish, if my Hector fall. Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share: O prove a husband's and a father's care! That quarter most the skilful Greeks annoy, Where yon wild fig trees join the wall of Troy : Thou, from this tower defend th' important post; That pass Tydides, Ajax, strive to gain; And there the vengeful Spartan fires his train; Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have given, Or led by hopes, or dictated from Heaven. Let others in the field their arms employ, But stay my Hector here, and guard his Troy." The chief replied: "That post shall be my care, Nor that alone, but all the works of war.

How would the sons of Troy, in arms renown'd, And Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,

Attaint the lustre of my former name,

Should Hector basely quit the field of fame?
My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to th' embattled plains:
Let me be foremost to defend the throne,
And guard my father's glories and my own.
Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates;
(How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!)
The day when thou, imperial Troy ! must bend,
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.
And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother's death, the ruin of my kind,

Not Priam's hoary hairs defiled with gore,
Nor all my brothers gasping on the shore,
As thine, Andromache! thy griefs I dread;
I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led!
In Argive looms our battles to design,
And woes, of which so large a part was thine!
To bear the victor's hard commands, or bring
The weight of waters from Hyperia's spring.
There, while you groan beneath the load of life,
They cry, behold the mighty Hector's wife!
Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see,
Embitters all thy woes by naming me.

The thoughts of glories past, and present shame,
A thousand griefs, shall waken at the name!
May I lie cold before that dreadful day,
Press'd with a load of monumental clay,
Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep."
Thus having spoke, th' illustrious chief of Troy
Stretched his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy.
The babe clung, crying, to his nurse's breast,
Scared at the dazzling helm, and nodding crest.
With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled,
And Hector hasted to relieve his child,

The glitt'ring terrors from his brows unbound,
And placed the beaming helmet on the ground;
Then kiss'd the child, and lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferr'd a father's prayer:

"O thou, whose glory fills th' ethereal throne, ་ And all ye deathless powers, protect my son! Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown, To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown, Against his country's foes the war to wage, And rise the Hector of the future age! So when triumphant from successful toils Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils,