Say, whence, obedient, to their destin’d end
The various tribes of living nature tend? 
Why beast, and bird, and all the countless race
Of earth and waters, each his proper place
Instinctive knows, and through the endless chain
Of being moves in one harmonious strain;
While man alone, with strange perversion, draws
Rebellious fame from Nature’s broken laws? 
Methinks I hear, in that still voice which stole
On Horeb’s mount o’er rapt Elijah’s soul,
With stern reproof indignant Heaven reply: 
’Tis o’erweening Pride, that blinds the eye
Of reasoning man, and o’er his darkened life
Confusion spreads and misery and strife.

With wonder fill’d and self-reflecting praise,
The slave of pride his mighty powers surveys;
On Reason’s sun (by bounteous Nature given,
To guide the soul upon her way to heaven)
Adoring gazes, ’till the dazzling light,
To darkness sears his rain presumptuous sight;
Then bold, though blind, through error’s night he runs,
In fancy lighted by a thousand suns;
For bloody laurels now the warrior plays,
Now libels nature for the poet’s bays;
Now darkness drinks from metaphysic springs,
Or follows fate on astrologick wings: 
’Mid toils at length the world’s loud wonder won,
With Persian piety, to Reason’s sun
Profound he bows, and, idolist of fame,
Forgets the God who lighted first the flame.

All potent Reason! what thy wond’rous light? 
A shooting star athwart a polar night;
A bubble’s gleam amid the boundless main;
A sparkling sand on waste Arabia’s plain: 
E’en such, vain Power, thy limited control,
E’en such thou art, to mans mysterious soul!

Presumptuous man! would’st thou aspiring reach
True wisdom’s height, let conscious weakness teach
Thy feeble soul her poor dependant state,
Nor madly war with Nature to be great.

Come then, Humility, thou surest guide! 
On earth again with frenzied men reside;
Tear the dark film of vanity and lies,
And inward turn their renovated eyes;
In aspect true let each himself behold,
By self deform’d in pride’s portentous mould. 
And if thy voice, on Bethl’em’s holy plain
Once heard, can reach their flinty hearts again,
Teach them, as fearful of a serpent’s gaze,
Teach them to shun the gloating eye of praise;
That slightest swervings from their nature’s plan
Make them a lie, and poison all the man,
’Till black corruption spread the soul throughout,
Whence thick and fierce, like fabled mandrakes, sprout
The seeds of rice with more than tropick force,
Exhausting in the growth their very vital source.