Pope's Thoughts on God and Man....good stuff, read it.

So while I was waiting for WebReg to stop being such a douche, I started reading Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Man." The first epistle is a bit slow, but it's got some Milton-esque qualities I find most agreeable. It had this great passage at the end of the first epistle carrying over into the second, so I copied it down. Enjoy!

"Cease then, nor order imperfection name,
our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.
Submit in this, or any other sphere,
secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
safe in the hand of one disposing Power,
or in the natal, or in the mortal hour.
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."

Isn't that rad? that one is all about God. The next one is about man.

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
the proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on an isthmus of a middle state,
a being darkly wise, and rudely great:
with too much knowledge for the skeptic side,
with too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
he hangs between, in doubt to act, or rest,
in doubt to deem himself a god or beast,
in doubt his mind or body to prefer,
born but to die, and reasoning but to err,
alike in ignorance, his reason such,
whether he thinks too little, or to much:
chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
still by himself abused, or disabused;
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!"

awsome view of the funtionality of mankind. brilliant. i love words.