work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5750,"",HDIS (Poetry),2004-01-02 00:00:00 UTC,"In vain, to thy white standard gathering round,
Wit, Worth, and Parts and Eloquence are found:
In vain, to push to birth thy great design,
Contending chiefs, and hostile virtues join;
All, from conflicting ranks, of power possesst
To rouse, to melt, or to inform the breast.
Where seasoned tools of Avarice prevail,
A Nation's eloquence, combined, must fail:
Each flimsy sophistry by turns they try;
The plausive argument, the daring lie,
The artful gloss, that moral sense confounds,
The' acknowledged thirst of gain that honour wounds:
Bane of ingenuous minds!--the' unfeeling sneer,
Which sudden turns to stone the falling tear:
They search assiduous, with inverted skill,
For forms of wrong, and precedents of ill;
With impious mockery wrest the sacred page,
And glean up crimes from each remoter age:
Wrung Nature's tortures, shuddering, while you tell,
From scoffing fiends bursts forth the laugh of hell;
In Britain's senate, Misery's pangs give birth
To jests unseemly, and to horrid mirth--
Forbear!--thy virtues but provoke our doom,
And swell the' account of vengeance yet to come;
For, not unmarked in Heaven's impartial plan,
Shall man, proud worm, contemn his fellow-man!
And injured Afric, by herself redresst,
Darts her own serpents at her tyrant's breast.
Each vice, to minds depraved by bondage known,
With sure contagion fastens on his own;
In sickly languors melts his nerveless frame,
And blows to rage impetuous Passion's flame:
Fermenting swift, the fiery venom gains
The milky innocence of infant veins;
There swells the stubborn will, damps learning's fire,
The whirlwind wakes of uncontrouled desire,
Sears the young heart to images of woe,
And blasts the buds of Virtue as they blow.
(ll. 19-56, pp. 123-4)",2011-02-05,15326,"","""Each vice, to minds depraved by bondage known, / With sure contagion fastens on his own.""","",2011-02-05 23:43:41 UTC,""
5750,"",HDIS,2004-01-03 00:00:00 UTC,"Nor less from the gay East, on essenced wings,
Breathing unnamed perfumes, Contagion springs;
The soft luxurious plague alike pervades
The marble palaces and rural shades;
Hence thronged Augusta builds her rosy bowers,
And decks in summer wreaths her smoky towers;
And hence, in summer bowers, Art's costly hand
Pours courtly splendours o'er the dazzled land:
The manners melt;--one undistinguished blaze
O'erwhelms the sober pomp of elder days;
Corruption follows with gigantic stride,
And scarce vouchsafes his shameless front to hide:
The spreading leprosy taints every part,
Infects each limb, and sickens at the heart.
Simplicity, most dear of rural maids,
Weeping resigns her violated shades:
Stern Independence from his glebe retires,
And anxious Freedom eyes her drooping fires;
By foreign wealth are British morals changed,
And Afric's sons, and India's, smile avenged.
(ll. 86-105, pp. 125-6)",,15330,•REVISIT. Does this belong? It is clearly metaphorical when the mind sickens--less so when the heart does.,Corruption may sicken the heart,"",2009-09-14 19:43:22 UTC,""
6046,Mind's Eye,"",2004-07-09 00:00:00 UTC,"Turn to the Nobles! there let Pity view
The many suff'ring for the guilty few!
Perish the wretch who, sanction'd by his birth,
Presumes to persecute the child of worth!
Perish the wretch who tarnishes descent
By the vile vaunting of a life ill spent!
Who sullies proud propinquity of blood,
Yet frowns indignant on the low-born Good!
Who shields his recreant bosom with a name;
And, first in Infamy, is last in Fame!
Yet let Reflection's eye discriminate
The difference 'twixt the mighty and the great!
Virtue is still illustrious, still sublime,
In ev'ry station, and in ev'ry clime!
Truth can derive no eminence from birth,
Rich in the proud supremacy of worth;
Its blest dominion vast and unconfin'd,
Its crown eternal, and its throne the mind!
Then Heav'n forbid that prejudice should scan
With jaundic'd eye the dignities of man!
That Persecution's agonizing rod
Should boldly smite the ""noblest work of God!""
That Rank should be a crime, and Genius hurl'd
A mournful wand'rer on the pitying world!
Yet Heav'n forbid that Ignorance should rise
On the dread basis where Religion dies!
That Liberty, immortal as the spheres,
Should steep her Laurel in a nation's tears!
Oh, falsely nam'd! Does Liberty require
The Child should perish for the guilty Sire?
Does Liberty inspire the Atheist's breast
To mock his God, and make his laws a jest?
Does Liberty with barbarous fetters bind
Her first-born hope, the freedom of the mind?
Hence, bold Usurper of that heav'n-taught pow'r,
Which wings with ecstacy man's transient hour!
Which bids the eye of Reason cloudless shine,
And gives Mortality a charm divine!
'Midst the wild winds, the lordly cedar tow'rs;
Progressive days invigorate its pow'rs;
The earlier branches, with'ring as they spread,
Round the firm root their coarsest foliage shed;
While the proud Tree its verdant head rears high,
Waves to the blast, and seems to pierce the sky;
Till the rich trunk, matur'd by length'ning years,
Through all their wondrous changes, braves the spheres;
Flings its rich fragrance on the gales that sweep
The humid forehead of the mountain's steep;
Mocks the fierce rage of elemental war,
The bolt's red sulphur, and the thunder's jar;
And, when around the shatter'd fragments lie,
The stricken victims of th' infuriate sky--
Amidst the wrecks of Nature seems to climb
Supremely grand, and awfully sublime!",,16035,"","The ""eye of Reason"" may ""cloudless shine""",Eye,2009-09-14 19:45:29 UTC,""
6071,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2005-08-29 00:00:00 UTC,"Oh! horrid Night!
Thou prying Monitor confest!
Whose key unlocks the human breast,
And bares each avenue to mental sight!
When from the festive bow'r
The frenzied Homicide retreats,
And, in his bosom's cell,
Essays each rising throb to quell;
Thy penetrating pow'r
His sense with many a Phantom greets;
He rushes forth in wild amaze!
While down his brow the big drop strays;
Then, from thy mist opaque,
Deep groans assail his startled ears,
His limbs convuls'd with horror shake,
And the short fev'rish Hour,
Such is thy dreadful pow'r!
An Age of agonizing woe appears;
For Sleep the vengeful fiends deride,
Till the blest Sun darts forth to bid thy reign subside!",,16071,•I've included twice: Lock and Avenue,"""Oh! horrid Night! / Thou prying Monitor confest! / Whose key unlocks the human breast, / And bares each avenue to mental sight!""","",2013-11-02 15:20:09 UTC,""
7427,"",Reading,2013-06-13 15:44:01 UTC,"Sonnet XLV.
On Leaving Part of Sussex
Farewel Aruna!--on whose varied shore
My early vows were paid to Nature's shrine,
When thoughtless joy, and infant hope were mine,
And whose lorn stream has heard me since deplore
Too many sorrows! Sighing I resign
Thy solitary beauties--and no more
Or on thy rocks, or in thy woods recline,
Or on the heath, by moon-light lingering, pore
On air-drawn phantoms--While in Fancy's ear
As in the evening wind thy murmurs swell,
The Enthusiast of the Lyre, who wander'd here,
Seems yet to strike his visionary shell,
Of power to call forth Pity's tenderest tear
Or wake wild frenzy--from her hideous cell!",,20617,"","""While in Fancy's ear / As in the evening wind thy murmurs swell, / The Enthusiast of the Lyre, who wander'd here, / Seems yet to strike his visionary shell, / Of power to call forth Pity's tenderest tear / Or wake wild frenzy--from her hideous cell!""","",2013-06-13 15:44:01 UTC,""
7434,"",Reading,2013-06-13 16:31:05 UTC,"Wit, that no suffering could impair,
Was thine, and thine whose mental powers
Of force to chase the fiends that tear
From Fancy's hands her budding flowers.
(ll. 25-8)",,20625,"","""Wit, that no suffering could impair, / Was thine, and thine whose mental powers / Of force to chase the fiends that tear / From Fancy's hands her budding flowers.""","",2013-06-13 16:31:05 UTC,Volume II
7435,"",Reading,2013-06-13 16:34:27 UTC,"Lost in the tomb, when Hope no more appeases
The fester'd wounds that prompt the eternal sigh,
Grief, the most fatal of the heart's diseases,
Soon teaches, who it fastens on, to die.
(ll. 49-52)",,20626,"","""Grief, the most fatal of the heart's diseases, / Soon teaches, who it fastens on, to die.""","",2013-06-13 16:34:27 UTC,""
7438,"",Reading,2013-06-13 17:01:35 UTC,"Thou spectre of terrific mien,
Lord of the hopeless heart and hollow eye,
In whose fierce train each form is sees
That drives sick Reason to insanity!
I woo thee with unusual prayer,
""Grim visaged, comfortless Despair:""
Approach; in me a willing victim find,
Who seeks thine iron sway--and calls thee kind!
Ah! hide for ever from my sight
The faithless flatterer Hope--whose pencil, gay,
Portrays some vision of delight,
Then bids the fairy tablet fade away;
While in dire contrast, to mine eyes
Thy phantoms, yet more hideous, rise,
And Memory draws, from Pleasure's wither'd flower,
Corrosives for the heart--of fatal power!
I bid the traitor Love, adieu!
Who to this fond, believing bosom came,
A guest insidious and untrue,
With Pity's soothing voice--in Friendship's name;
The wounds he gave, nor Time shall cure
Nor Reason teach me to endure.
And to that breast mild Patience pleads in vain,
Which feels the curse--of meriting it's pain.
(ll. 1-24, pp. 49-50)",,20629,"Quoting Gray's ""Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,"" l. 69","""Thou spectre of terrific mien, / Lord of the hopeless heart and hollow eye, / In whose fierce train each form is sees / That drives sick Reason to insanity!""","",2013-06-13 17:20:48 UTC,""