VII. Far as Creation's ample range extends, The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends: Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race, From the green myriads in the peopled grass: 210 What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme, The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam: Of smell, the headlong lioness between, And hound sagacious on the tainted green: Of hearing, from the life that fills the Flood, 215 To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood: The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew? 220 How Instinct varies in the grov'lling swine, Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine! 'Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier, For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near! Remembrance and Reflection how ally'd; 225 What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide: And Middle natures, how they long to join, Yet never pass th' insuperable line! Without this just gradation, could they be Subjected, these to those, or all to thee? 230 The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone, Is not thy Reason all these pow'rs in one?
VIII. See, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick, and bursting into birth. Above, how high, progressive life may go! 235 Around, how wide! how deep extend below! Vast chain of Being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee, 240 From thee to Nothing.--On superior pow'rs Were we to press, inferior might on ours: Or in the full creation leave a void, Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd: From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, 245 Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
And, if each system in gradation roll Alike essential to th' amazing Whole, The least confusion but in one, not all That system only, but the Whole must fall. 250 Let Earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly, Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky; Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl'd, Being on Being wreck'd, and world on world; Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod, 255 And Nature tremble to the throne of God. All this dread ORDER break--for whom? for thee? Vile worm!--Oh Madness! Pride! Impiety!