Some happier island in the watery 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 seraph’s fire;
  But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
  His faithful dog shall bear him company. 
    Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,
  Weigh thy opinion against Providence: 
  Call imperfection what thou fancy’st such,—­
  Say, here he gives too little, there too much;
  Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
  Yet cry, If man’s unhappy, God’s unjust,—­
  If man alone engross not Heaven’s high care,
  Alone made perfect here, immortal there;
  Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
  Re-judge his justice, be the god of God. 
  In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
  All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. 
  Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes: 
  Men would be angels, angels would be gods. 
  Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
  Aspiring to be angels, men rebel;
  And who but wishes to invert the laws
  Of Order, sins against the Eternal Cause.

* * * * *

    All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
  Whose body Nature is, and God the soul: 
  That, changed through all, and yet in all the same;
  Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame;
  Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
  Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
  Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
  Spreads undivided, operates unspent: 
  Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
  As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
  As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
  As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: 
  To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
  He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all. 
    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 blest 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.

* * * * *

    Order is Heaven’s first law:  and, this confest,
  Some are and must be greater than the rest,
  More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
  That such are happier, shocks all common-sense. 
  Heaven to mankind impartial we confess,
  If all are equal in their happiness: