work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
4776,"",Reading,2003-07-23 00:00:00 UTC,"On Snuff-Taking
Custom, in this small article I find
What strong ascendency thou hast o'er the mind.
My friend;s advice the first inducements were:
'Take it,' said she, 'it will your spirits cheer.'
All resolute the offered drug to take,
But in the trial sickened with my hate.
By repetition I was brought to bear,
Then rather liked, now love it too, too dear.
Be careful, oh, my soul! how thou let'st in
The baneful poison of repeated sin;
Never be intimate with any crime,
Lest Custom makes it amiable in time.
(p. 219)",,12689,•My reading: Sin and snuff are here analogized so that body and soul line up as analogical terms. ,"The soul may let in ""the baneful poison of repeated sin"" as the snuff-taker does snuff","",2009-09-14 19:37:16 UTC,I've included the complete poem
4784,"","After Jill Campbell's presentation at UCB: ""Sporus, Sappho, and the Ape""",2003-12-03 00:00:00 UTC,"The wretched Flavia, on her couch reclined,
Thus breathed the anguish of a wounded mind.
A glass reversed in her right hand she bore,
For now she shunned the face she sought before.
(ll. 1-4, p. 56)
",,12703,"",The mind may be wounded,"",2009-09-14 19:37:17 UTC,""
4808,"",Reading,2009-09-14 19:37:28 UTC,"So numerous herds are driven o'er the rock,
No print is left of all the passing flock;
So sings the wind around the solid stone,
So vainly beat the waves with fruitless moan.
Tedious the toil, and great the workman's care,
Who dare attempt to fix impressions there.
But should some swain more skillful than the rest,
Engrave his name on this cold marble breast,
Not rolling ages could deface that name--
Through all the storms of life 'tis still the same:
Though length of years with moss may shade the ground
Deep, though unseen, remains the secret wound.
(ll. 72-83, p. 65)",2003-10-22,12863,"•After the speaker has castigated changeable Bathurst for falling in and out of love (with Cloe, Celia, and Belinda), she compares his easily impressed mind to her ""cold marble breast.""
•Note shifting from landscape to sculpture and then back to landscape--now the implication is that it is a cemetery or garden. (Bathurst's mind was a burning plain that was easily impressed, but the mark was just as easily effaced.)
•Still no clearer. REVISIT. (10/22/2003)",The [heart?] may be wounded and the wound may be secret,"",2009-09-14 19:37:28 UTC,""
4938,"","Reading Sheryl O'Donnell's ""Mr. Locke and the Ladies"" in SECC Vol. 8 (p. 157-8)",2005-07-06 00:00:00 UTC,"[...] The most certain security would be that diffidence which naturally arises from an impartial self-examination. But this is the hardest of all tasks, requiring great reflection, long retirement, and is strongly repugnant to our own vanity, which very unwillingly reveals, even to ourselves, our common frailty, though it is every way a useful study. Mr. Locke, who has made a more exact dissection of the human mind than any man before him, declares he gained all his knowledge from consideration of himself. It is indeed necessary to judge others.
(p. 452)",2007-10-12,13298,"•In a letter to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, March 1, 1754.","""Mr. Locke, who has made a more exact dissection of the human mind than any man before him, declares he gained all his knowledge from consideration of himself.""","",2009-09-14 19:38:06 UTC,"Letter to the Countess of Bute, March 1, 1754"