Alexander Pope on Nature
1688–1744 England
← All quotes by Alexander Pope
8 quotes
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.
Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise.
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My footstool Earth, my canopy the skies.
See plastic Nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place
Form'd and impell'd its neighbor to embrace.
Jove, thou regent of the skies.
Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
And makes night hideous;—Answer him, ye owls!
The Dunciad (1813)
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,
From Thee to nothing.