Universal Prayer
by Alexander Pope
Father of all! In every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
Thou Great First Cause, least understood
Who all my sense confined
To know but this, that Thou art good
And that myself am blind.
Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill;
And, binding Nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.
What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,
This teach me more than Hell to shun,
That more than Heaven pursue.
What blessings Thy free bounty gives
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives:
To enjoy is to obey.
Yet not to earth’s contracted span
Thy goodness let me bound.
Or think Thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round.
Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume Thy bolts to throw,
And teach damnation round the land
On each I judge Thy foe.
If I am right, Thy grace import
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find that better way!
Save me alike from foolish pride,
Or impious discontent,
At aught Thy wisdom has denied,
Or aught that goodness lent.
Teach me to feel another’s woe,
To right the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
Mean though I am, not wholely so,
Since quickened by Thy breath;
Oh, lead me wheresoe'er I go,
Through this day’s life or death.
This day be bread and peace my lot;
All else beneath the sun
Though know’st if best bestowed or not,
And let Thy will be done!
To Thee Whose temple is of space,—
Whose altar earth, sea, skies,—
One chorus let all beings raise!
All Nature’s incense rise.
Pope wrote this prayer, usually appended to the "Essay on Man," in 1738; part of the reason being that he became worried that some expressions in the earlier work could be read in a Spinozistic way. I find it somewhat amusing that Lennox's article in the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia says of it that "despite the piety it displays, [it] is not entirely convincing"; amusing, but I'm not sure it's entirely fair to Pope.
