Life and Existence

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law, Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite: Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer books are the toys of age! Pleas’d with this bauble still, as that before; Till tir’d he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law, Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite: Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer books are the toys of age! Pleas’d with this bauble still, as that before; Till tir’d he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law, Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite: Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer books are the toys of age! Pleas’d with this bauble still, as that before; Till tir’d he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.

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.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

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-topp’d hill, an humbler 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.

Say first, of God above or man below, What can we reason but from what we know?

In wit a man, simplicity a child.

Awake, my St. John! 4 leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us, since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die, Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

Awake, my St. John! 4 leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us, since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die, Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

Awake, my St. John! 4 leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us, since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die, Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

But thousands die, without or this or that, Die, and endow a college, or a cat.

’Tis education forms the common mind: Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclin’d.

Vital spark of heav’nly flame! Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!

Vital spark of heav’nly flame! Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!

’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown, Thus unlamented let me die, Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.

Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it.

Happy the man whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground.

Youth’s the season made for joys, Love is then our duty.

Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.

By night an atheist half believes a God.