The Elements

MAN is permitted much To scan and learn In Nature’s frame; Till he well-nigh can tame Brute mischiefs, and can touch Invisible things, and turn All warring ills to purposes of good. Thus, as a god below, He can control, And harmonize, what seems amiss to flow As sever’d from the whole And dimly understood. But o’er the elements One Hand alone, One Hand has sway. What influence day by day In straiter belt prevents The impious Ocean, thrown Alternate o’er the ever-sounding shore? Or who has eye to trace How the Plague came? Forerun the doublings of the Tempest’s race? Or the Air’s weight and flame On a set scale explore? Thus God has will’d That man, when fully skill’d, Still gropes in twilight dim; Encompass’d all his hours By fearfullest powers Inflexible to him. That so he may discern His feebleness, And e’en for earth’s success To Him in wisdom turn, Who holds for us the keys of either home, Earth and the world to come.