work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
6964,Mind's Eye,Reading,2011-06-23 04:17:33 UTC,"Ye pale Inhabitants of Night,
Before my intellectual Sight
In solemn Pomp ascend:
O tell how trifling now appears
The Train of idle Hopes and Fears
That varying Life attend.
Ye faithless Idols of our Sense,
Here own how vain your fond Pretence,
Ye empty Names of Joy!
Your transient Forms like Shadows pass,
Frail Offspring of the magic Glass,
Before the mental Eye.
The dazzling Colours, falsely bright,
Attract the gazing vulgar Sight
With superficial State:
Thro' Reason's clearer Optics view'd,
How stript of all it's Pomp, how rude
Appears the painted Cheat.
(pp. 80-1)",,18775,"","Melancholy's ""transient Forms like Shadows pass, / Frail Offspring of the magic Glass, / Before the mental Eye.""",Mirror,2014-07-15 16:04:26 UTC,""
5681,"",Reading,2012-08-13 21:27:04 UTC,"If heaven has into being deign'd to call
Thy light, O LIBERTY! to shine on all;
Bright intellectual Sun! why does thy ray
To earth distribute only partial day?
Since no resisting cause from spirit flows
Thy penetrating essence to opose;
No obstacles by Nature's hand imprest,
Thy subtle and ethereal beams arrest;
Nor motion's laws can speed thy active course,
Nor strong repulsion's pow'rs obstruct thy force;
Since there is no convexity in MIND,
Why are thy genial beams to parts confin'd?
While the chill North with thy bright ray is blest,
Why should fell darkness half the South invest?
Was it decreed, fair Freedom! at thy birth,
That thou shou'd'st ne'er irradiate all the earth?
While Britain basks in thy full blaze of light,
Why lies sad Afric quench'd in total night?
(ll. 1-18, p. 101 in Wood)",,19908,"","""Since there is no convexity in MIND, / Why are thy genial beams to parts confined?""",Optics,2012-08-13 21:27:04 UTC,""