The hour conceal'd, and so remote the fear, II. Whether with reason or with instinct blest, 75 80 And find the means proportion'd to their end. 85 Cares not for service, or but serves when press'd, Who taught the nations of the field and wood To shun their poison, and to choose their food? 100 Sure as De Moivre, without rule or line? 105 Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before? 110 Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds: 4 After ver. 84 in the MS. "While man, with opening views of various ways 66 So from the first eternal Order ran, And creature link'd to creature, man to man. Whate'er of life all-quick'ning ether keeps, Or breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps, 115 120 They love themselves, a third time, in their race. 125 There stops the instinct, and there ends the care The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace, A longer care man's helpless kind demands; 130 At once extend the interest, and the love: With choice we fix, with sympathy we burn; 135 And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise, Still as one brood, and as another rose, These natural love maintain'd, habitual those : 140 145 Still spread the interest and preserved the kind. IV. Nor think, in Nature's state they blindly trod; The state of Nature was the reign of God: . Self-love and social at her birth began, Union the bond of all things, and of man. 150 Pride then was not; nor arts, that pride to aid; Man walk'd with beast, joint tenant of the shade ; No murder clothed him, and no murder fed. In the same temple, the resounding wood, 155 All vocal beings hymn'd their equal God: The shrine with gore unstain'd, with gold undress'd, See him from Nature rising slow to Art! 160 165 170 Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake : 66 Go, from the creatures thy instructions take: 5 Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield; 6 5 ["They who discourse of the inventions and originals of things, refer them rather to beasts, birds, and fishes, and serpents, than to man. So that it was no marvel (the manner of antiquity being to consecrate inventors) that the Egyptians had so few human idols in their temples, but almost all brute. Who taught the raven in a drought to throw pebbles into a hollow tree when she spied water, that the water might rise so as she might come to it? Who taught the bee to sail through such a vast sea of air, and to find the way from a field in flower a great way off to her hive? Who taught the ant to bite every grain of corn she burieth in her hill, lest it should take root and grow?"-Bacon's Advancement of Learning.] 6 It is a caution commonly practised among navigators, when thrown upon Thy arts of building from the bee receive; 175 Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. 180 And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind : 185 190 And right, too rigid, harden into wrong; Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong. Yet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway, 195 Thus let the wiser make the rest obey: And for those arts mere instinct could afford, Be crown'd as monarchs, or as gods adored." V. Great Nature spoke; observant man obey'd; Cities were built, societies were made: 200 Here rose one little state; another near8 Grew by like means, and join'd, through love or fear. a desert coast, and in want of refreshments, to observe what fruits have been touched by the birds; and to venture on these without further hesitation. 66 7 Oppian. Halieut., 1. i., describes this fish in the following manner:They swim on the surface of the sea, on the back of their shells, which exactly resemble the hulk of a ship; they raise two feet like masts, and extend a membrane between, which serves as a sail; the other two feet they employ as oars at the side. They are usually seen in the Mediterranean." 8 In the MS. thus: "The neighbours leagued to guard the common spot; For want alone each animal contends; Plain Nature's wants the common mother crown'd, She pour'd her acorns, herbs, and streams around. [No |