Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
  To low ambition, and the pride of kings. 
  Let us (since life can little more supply
  Than just to look about us, and to die)
  Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;
  A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
  A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;
  Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. 
  Together let us beat this ample field,
  Try what the open, what the covert yield;
  The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
  Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
  Eye Nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies,
  And catch the manners living as they rise;
  Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
  But vindicate the ways of God to man.

  I.

  Say first, of God above, or man below,
  What can we reason, but from what we know? 
  Of man, what see we but his station here
  From which to reason or to which refer? 
  Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,
  ’Tis ours to trace him only in our own. 
  He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
  See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
  Observe how system into system runs. 
  What other planets circle other suns,
  What varied being peoples every star,
  May tell why Heaven has made us as we are. 
  But of this frame the bearings, and the ties,
  The strong connections, nice dependencies,
  Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
  Looked through? or can a part contain the whole?

  Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
  And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?

  II.

  Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,
  Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind? 
  First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
  Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less? 
  Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
  Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade? 
  Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
  Why Jove’s satellites are less than Jove.

  Of systems possible, if ’tis confessed
  That wisdom infinite must form the best,
  Where all must full or not coherent be,
  And all that rises, rise in due degree;
  Then, in the scale of reasoning life, ’tis plain,
  There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man: 
  And all the question (wrangle e’er so long)
  Is only this, if God has placed him wrong?

  Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
  May, must be right, as relative to all. 
  In human works, though laboured on with pain,
  A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
  In God’s, one single can its end produce;
  Yet serves to second too some other use. 
  So man, who here seems principal alone,
  Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
  Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;
  ’Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.