text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"But not alike to every mortal eye
Is this great scene unveil'd. For since the claims
Of social life, to different labours urge
The active powers of man; with wise intent
The hand of nature on peculiar minds
Imprints a different byass, and to each
Decrees its province in the common toil.
To some she taught the fabric of the sphere,
The changeful moon, the circuit of the stars,
The golden zones of heaven: to some she gave
To weigh the moment of eternal things,
Of time, and space, and fate's unbroken chain,
And will's quick impulse: others by the hand
She led o'er vales and mountains, to explore
What healing virtue swells the tender veins
Of herbs and flowers; or what the beams of morn
Draw forth, distilling from the clifted rind
In balmy tears. . But some, to higher hopes
Were destin'd; some within a finer mould
She wrought, and temper'd with a purer flame.
To these the sire omnipotent unfolds
The world's harmonious volume, there to read
The transcript of himself. On every part
They trace the bright impressions of his hand:
In earth or air, the meadow's purple stores,
The moon's mild radiance, or the virgin's form
Blooming with rosy smiles, they see portray'd
That uncreated beauty, which delights
The mind supreme. They also feel her charms,
Enamour'd; they partake the eternal joy.
(Bk. I, ll. 79-108, pp. 15-6)",2011-06-11 19:00:34 UTC,"""The hand of nature on peculiar minds / Imprints a different byass, and to each / Decrees its province in the common toil.""",2004-01-06 00:00:00 UTC,Book I,"",2011-06-11,Impressions,"",HDIS (Poetry),14400,5366
" By these mysterious ties the busy power
Of memory her ideal train preserves
Intire; or when they would elude her watch,
Reclaims their fleeting footsteps from the waste
Of dark oblivion; thus collecting all
The various forms of being to present,
Before the curious aim of mimic art,
Their largest choice: like spring's unfolded blooms
Exhaling sweetness, that the skillful bee
May taste at will, from their selected spoils
To work her dulcet food. For not the expanse
Of living lakes in summer's noontide calm,
Reflects the bordering shade, and sun-bright heavens
With fairer semblance; not the sculptur'd gold
More faithful keeps the graver's lively trace,
Than he whose birth the sister powers of art
Propitious view'd, and from his genial star
Shed influence to the seeds of fancy kind;
Than his attemper'd bosom must preserve
The seal of nature. There alone unchang'd,
Her form remains. The balmy walks of May
There breathe perennial sweets: the trembling chord
Resounds for ever in the abstracted car,
Melodious: and the virgin's radiant eye,
Superior to disease, to grief, and time,
Shines with unbating lustre. Thus at length
Indow'd with all that nature can bestow,
The child of fancy oft in silence bends
O'er these mixt treasures of his pregnant breast,
With conscious pride. From them he oft resolves
To frame he knows not what excelling things;
And win he knows not what sublime reward
Of praise and wonder. By degrees, the mind
Feels her young nerves dilate: the plastic powers
Labour for action: blind emotions heave
His bosom; and with loveliest frenzy caught,
From earth to heaven he rowls his daring eye,
From heaven to earth. Anon ten thousand shapes,
Like spectres trooping to the wisard's call,
Flit swift before him. From the womb of earth,
From ocean's bed they come: the eternal heavens
Disclose their splendors, and the dark abyss
Pours out her births unknown: With fixed gaze
He marks the rising phantoms. Now compares
Their different forms; now blends them, now divides,
Inlarges and extenuates by turns;
Opposes, ranges in fantastic bands,
And infinitely varies. Hither now,
Now thither fluctuates his inconstant aim,
With endless choice perplex'd. At length his plan
Begins to open. Lucid order dawns;
And as from Chaos old the jarring seeds
Of nature at the voice divine repair'd
Each to its place, till rosy earth unveil'd
Her fragrant bosom, and the joyful sun
Sprung up the blue serene; by swift degrees
Thus disentangled, his entire design
Emerges. Colours mingle, features join,
And lines converge: the fainter parts retire;
The fairer eminent in light advance;
And every image on its neighbour smiles.
A while he stands, and with a father's joy
Contemplates. Then with Promethéan art,
Into its proper vehicle he breathes
The fair conception; which, imbodied thus,
And permanent, becomes to eyes or ears
An object ascertain'd: while thus inform'd,
The various organs of his mimic skill,
The consonance of sounds, the featur'd rock,
The shadowy picture and impassion'd verse,
Beyond their proper powers attract the soul
By that expressive semblance, while in sight
Of nature's great original we scan
The lively child of art; while line by line,
And feature after feature we refer
To that sublime exemplar whence it stole
Those animating charms. Thus beauty's palm
Betwixt them wavering hangs: applauding love
Doubts where to chuse; and mortal man aspires
To tempt creative praise. As when a cloud
Of gathering hail with limpid crusts of ice
Inclos'd and obvious to the beaming sun,
Collects his large effulgence; strait the heavens
With equal flames present on either hand
The radiant visage: Persia stands at gaze,
Appall'd; and on the brink of Ganges doubts
The snowy-vested seer, in Mithra's name,
To which the fragrance of the south shall burn,
To which his warbled orisons ascend.
(Book III, ll. 348-436)",2011-06-13 17:38:05 UTC,"""More faithful keeps the graver's lively trace, / Than he whose birth the sister powers of art / Propitious view'd, and from his genial star / Shed influence to the seeds of fancy kind; / Than his attemper'd bosom must preserve / The seal of nature.""",2005-04-20 00:00:00 UTC,Book III,"",2011-06-13,"","","Searching ""seal"" and ""bosom"" in HDIS (Poetry)",14456,5366
"2. The mother of the first Bacchus, whose birth and education was written, as Diodorus Siculus informs us, in the old Pelasgic character, by Thymoetes, grandson to Laomedon, and contemporary with Orpheus. Thymoetes had travelled over Libya to the country which borders on the western ocean; there he saw the island of Nysa, and learned from the inhabitants, that ""Ammon, king of Libya, was married in former ages to Rhea, sister of Saturn and the Titans: that he afterwards fell in love with a beautiful virgin whose name was Amalthea; had by her a son, and gave her possession of a neighbouring tract of land, wonderfully fertile; which in shape nearly resembling the horn of an ox, was thence called the Hesperian horn, and afterwards the horn of Amalthea: that fearing the jealousy of Rhea, he concealed the young Bacchus, with his mother, in the island of Nysa;"" the beauty of which, Diodorus describes with great dignity and pomp of style. This fable is one of the noblest in all the ancient mythology, and seems to have made a particular impression on the imagination of Milton; the only modern poet (unless perhaps it be necessary to except Spenser) who, in these mysterious traditions of the poetic story, had a heart to feel, and words to express, the simple and solitary genius of antiquity. To raise the idea of his Paradise, he prefers it even to ------ ""that Nysean isle
Girt by the river Triton, where old Cham,
(Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Libyan Jove)
Hid Amalthea, and her florid son,
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye.""
(pp. 383-4)",2014-02-17 20:54:24 UTC,"""This fable is one of the noblest in all the ancient mythology, and seems to have made a particular impression on the imagination of Milton.""",2005-05-15 00:00:00 UTC,"","",2011-06-13,Impressions,"•The second of 3 notes attached to the stanza. The line is ""Ye love to wander, Amalthea[2] pours""","Searching ""mind"" and ""impression"" in HDIS (Poetry); found again in ECCO",14460,5379
"1. Hesiod, in his Theogony, gives a different account, and makes Chaos the eldest of beings; though he assigns to Love neither father nor superior; which circumstance is particularly mentioned by Phædrus, inPlato's Banquet , as being observable not only in Hesiod, but in all other writers both of verse and prose: and on the same occasion he cites a line from Parmenides, in which Love is expressly stiled the eldest of all the gods. Yet Aristophanes, in The Birds , affirms, that ""Chaos, and Night, and Erebus, and Tartarus, were ""first; and that Love was produced from an egg, which the sable-winged night deposited in the immense bosom of Erebus."" But it must be observed, that the Love designed by this comic poet was always distinguished from the other, from that original and self-existent being the ΤΟ ΟΝ or ΑΓΑΘΟΝ [AGATHON] of Plato, and meant only the ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΟΣ [DEMIURGOS] or second person of the old Græcian trinity; to whom is inscribed an hymn among those which pass under the name of Orpheus, where he is called Protogonos, or the first-begotten, is said to have been born of an egg, and is represented as the principal or origin of all these external appearances of nature. In the fragments of Orpheus, collected by Henry Stephens, he is named Phanes, the discoverer or discloser; who unfolded the ideas of the supreme intelligence, and exposed them to the perception of inferior beings in this visible frame of the world; as Macrobius, and Proclus, and Athenagoras all agree to interpret the several passages of Orpheus which they have preserved.
But the Love designed in our text, is the one self-existent and infinite mind, whom if the generality of ancient mythologists have not introduced or truly described in accounting for the production of the world and its appearances; yet, to a modern poet, it can be no objection that he hath ventured to differ from them in this particular; though, in other respects, he professeth to imitate their manner and conform to their opinions. For, in these great points of natural theology, they differ no less remarkably among themselves; and are perpetually confounding the philosophical relations of things with the traditionary circumstances of mythic history: upon which very account, Callimachus, in his hymn to Jupiter, declareth his dissent from them concerning even an article of the national creed; adding, that the ancient bards were by no means to be depended on. And yet in the exordium of the old Argonautic poem, ascribed to Orpheus, it is said, that ""Love, whom mortals in later times call Phanes, was the father of the eternally-begotten Night;"" who is generally represented by these mythological poets, as being herself the parent of all things; and who, in the Indigitamenta, or Orphic Hymns, is said to be the same with Cypris, or Love itself. Moreover, in the body of this Argonautic poem, where the personated Orpheus introduceth himself singing to his lyre in reply to Chiron, he celebrateth ""the obscure memory of Chaos, and the natures which it contained within itself in a state of perpetual vicissitude; how the heaven had its boundary determined; the generation of the earth; the depth of the ocean; and also the sapient Love, the most ancient, the self-sufficient; with all the beings which he produced when he separated one thing from another."" Which noble passage is more directly to Aristotle's purpose in the first book of his metaphysics than any of those which he has there quoted, to shew that the ancient poets and mythologists agreed with Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the other more sober philosophers, in that natural anticipation and common notion of mankind concerning the necessity of mind and reason to account for the connexion, motion, and good order of the world. For, though neither this poem, nor the hymns which pass under the same name, are, it should seem, the work of the real Orpheus; yet beyond all question, they are very ancient. The hymns, more particularly, are allowed to be older than the invasion of Greece by Xerxes; and were probably a sett of public and solemn forms of devotion: as appears by a passage in one of them, which Demosthenes hath almost literally cited in his first oration against Aristogiton, as the saying of Orpheus, the founder of their most holy mysteries. On this account, they are of higher authority than any other mythological work now extant, the Theogony of Hesiod himself not excepted. The poetry of them is often extremely noble; and the mysterious air which prevails in them, together with its delightful impression upon the mind, cannot be better expressed than in that remarkable description with which they inspired the German editor Eschenbach, when he accidentally met with them at Leipsic: ""Thesaurum me reperisse credidi, says he, & profecto thesaurum reperi. Incredibile dictu quo me sacro horrore asslaverint indigitamenta ista deorum: nam et tempus ad illorum lectionem eligere cogebar, quod vel solum horrorem incutere animo potest, nocturnum; cum enim totam diem consumserim in contemplando urbis splendore, & in adeundis, quibus scatet urbs illa, viris doctis; sola nox restabat, quam Orpheo consecrare potui. In abyssum quendam mysteriorum venerandæ antiquitatis descendere videbar, quotiescunque silente mundo, solis vigilantibus astris et luna, μελανηφάτους istos hymnos ad manus sumsi.""",2014-02-18 02:25:52 UTC,""The poetry of them is often extremely noble; and the mysterious air which prevails in them, together with its delightful impression upon the mind, cannot be better expressed than in that remarkable description with which they inspired the German editor Eschenbach.""",2014-02-18 02:25:52 UTC,"","",2014-02-17,Impressions,"• Total mess! I cleaned the markup up some but should transliterate the Greek.
• replaced the greek by consulting a Google book... Can't make out the second, lowercase greek word -- μελα[?]ηφατες? OK, misspelled? I find it as μελανηφάτους in UVa E-Text center!
•The first of 12 notes attached to the stanza. The lines are
Where shall my song begin, ye Nymphs? or end?
Wide is your praise and copious--First of things,
First of the lonely powers, ere Time arose,
[1]Were Love and Chaos[2].
•Reviewed: 2011-06-10
•Realized that this was attached to the wrong title. moving it here. Deleted other entry, title.","Searching ""mind"" and ""impression"" in HDIS (Poetry)",23405,5379