MAN.
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
* * * * *
A beam ethereal, sullied, and absorpt!
Though sullied and dishonored, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
A worm! a god!
* * * * *
What can preserve my life? or what destroy?
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.
Night Thoughts, Night I. DR. E. YOUNG.
Nature they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating as by rote.
Commemoration Ode. J.R. LOWELL.
Man is the nobler growth our realms supply,
And souls are ripened in our northern sky.
The Invitation. MRS. A.L. BARBAULD.
'Tis God gives skill,
But not without men's hands: He could not make
Antonio Stradivari's violins
Without Antonio.
Stradivarius. GEORGE ELIOT.
Not two strong men the enormous weight could raise;
Such men as live in these degenerate days.
Iliad, Bk. V. HOMER. Trans. of POPE.
Be wise with speed:
A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
Love of Fame, Satire II. DR. E. YOUNG.
What tho' short thy date?
Virtue, not rolling suns, the mind matures.
That life is long which answers life's great end.
The time that bears no fruit deserves no name.
The man of wisdom is the man of years.
In hoary youth Methusalems may die;
O, how misdated on their flatt'ring tombs!
Night Thoughts, Night V. DR. E. YOUNG.
Man!
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear.
Childe Harold, Canto IV. LORD BYRON.
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground:
Another race the following spring supplies;
They fall successive, and successive rise.
Iliad, Bk. VI. HOMER. Trans. of POPE.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
* * * * *
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Essay on Man, Epistle II. A. POPE.