An Essay on Man (Epistle 1, Lines 77 - 112) versuri

An Essay on Man (Epistle 1, Lines 77 – 112) lyrics by Peggy Ashcroft, Emma Topping, George Rylands

Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of fate
All but the page prescrib’d, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas’d to the last, he crops the flow’ry food
And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv’n
That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heav’n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d
And now a bubble burst, and now a world

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore!
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home
Rests and expatiates in a life to come

Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul, proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav’n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d
Some happier island in the wat’ry 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