The proper organs, proper powers assigned;
  Each seeming want compensated of course,
  Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
  All in exact proportion to the state;
  Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. 
  Each beast, each insect, happy in its own: 
  Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone? 
  Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
  Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all? 
  The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)
  Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
  No powers of body or of soul to share,
  But what his nature and his state can bear. 
  Why has not man a microscopic eye? 
  For this plain reason, man is not a fly. 
  Say what the use, were finer optics given,
  T’ inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? 
  Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o’er,
  To smart and agonize at every pore? 
  Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,
  Die of a rose in aromatic pain? 
  If nature thundered in his opening ears,
  And stunned him with the music of the spheres,
  How would he wish that Heaven had left him still
  The whispering zephyr, and the purling rill? 
  Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
  Alike in what it gives and what denies?

  VII. 
  Far as creation’s ample range extends,
  The scale of sensual, mental power ascends. 
  Mark how it mounts, to man’s imperial race,
  From the green myriads in the peopled grass: 
  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? 
  How instinct varies in the grovelling swine,
  Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine! 
  ’Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier,
  Forever separate, yet forever near! 
  Remembrance and reflection how allied;
  What thin partitions 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? 
  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,