Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate, <br />All but the page prescrib'd, their present state: <br />From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: <br />Or who could suffer being here below? <br />The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today, <br />Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? <br />Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food, <br />And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. <br />Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, <br />That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n: <br />Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, <br />A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, <br />Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, <br />And now a bubble burst, and now a world. <br /> <br />Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; <br />Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore. <br />What future bliss, he gives not thee to know, <br />But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. <br />Hope springs eternal in the human breast: <br />Man never is, but always to be blest: <br />The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, <br />Rests and expatiates in a life to come. <br /> <br />Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind <br />Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; <br />His soul, proud science never taught to stray <br />Far as the solar walk, or milky way; <br />Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n, <br />Behind the cloud topp'd hill, an humbler heav'n; <br />Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd, <br />Some happier island in the wat'ry waste, <br />Where slaves once more their native land behold, <br />No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. <br />To be, contents his natural desire, <br />He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; <br />But thinks, admitted to that equal sky.<br /><br />Alexander Pope<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/from-an-essay-on-man/
