text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
" My frame of nature is a ruffled sea,
And my disease the tempest. Nature feels
A strange commotion to her inmost centre;
The throne of reason shakes. 'Be still, my thoughts;
'Peace and be still.' In vain my reason gives
The peaceful word, my spirit strives in vain
To calm the tumult and command my thoughts.
This flesh, this circling blood, these brutal powers,
Made to obey, turn rebels to the mind,
Nor hear its laws. The engine rules the man.
Unhappy change! When nature's meaner springs,
Fir'd to impetuous ferments, break all order;
When little restless atoms rise and reign
Tyrants in sov'reign uproar, and impose
Ideas on the mind; confus'd ideas
Of non-existents and impossibles,
Who can describe them? Fragments of old dreams,
Borrow'd from midnight, torn from fairy fields
And fairy skies, and regions of the dead,
Abrupt, ill-sorted! O 'tis all confusion!
If I but close my eyes, strange images
In thousand forms and thousand colours rise,
Stars, rainbows, moons, green dragons, bears and ghosts,
An endless medley rush upon the stage,
And dance and riot wild in reason's court
Above control. I'm in a raging storm,
Where seas and skies are blended, while my soul
Like some light worthless chip of floating cork
Is tost from wave to wave: Now overwhelm'd
With breaking floods, I drown, and seem to lose
All being: Now high-mounted on the ridge
Of a tall foaming surge, I'm all at once
Caught up into the storm, and ride the wind,
The whistling wind; unmanageable steed,
And feeble rider! Hurried many a league
Over the rising hills of roaring brine,
Thro' airy wilds unknown, with dreadful speed
And infinite surprise; till some few minutes
Have spent the blast, and then perhaps I drop
Near to the peaceful coast; some friendly billow
Lodges me on the beach, and I find rest:
Short rest I find; for the next rolling wave
Snatches me back again; then ebbing far
Sets me adrift, and I am borne off to sea,
Helpless, amidst the bluster of the winds,
Beyond the ken of shore.
",2011-09-07 19:34:50 UTC,"""I'm in a raging storm, / Where seas and skies are blended, while my soul / Like some light worthless chip of floating cork / Is tost from wave to wave.""",2004-08-26 00:00:00 UTC,"","",2011-09-07,"","•I've included thrice: Tempest, Waves, Cork",HDIS (Poetry),11924,4532
"Yet man (fool man!) here buries all his thoughts;
Inters celestial hopes without one sigh;
Prisoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes; wing'd by Heaven
To fly at infinite; and reach it there
Where seraphs gather immortality,
On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God.
What golden joys ambrosial clustering glow
In His full beam, and ripen for the just,
Where momentary ages are no more!
Where Time, and Pain, and Chance, and Death expire!
And is it in the flight of threescore years
To push eternity from human thought,
And smother souls immortal in the dust?
A soul immortal, spending all her fires,
Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptured, or alarm'd,
At aught this scene can threaten, or indulge,
Resembles ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
(ll. 135-154, pp. 40-1 in CUP edition)",2013-06-05 19:41:01 UTC,"""A soul immortal, spending all her fires, / Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness, / Thrown into tumult, raptured, or alarm'd, / At aught this scene can threaten, or indulge, / Resembles ocean into tempest wrought, / To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.""",2013-06-05 19:41:01 UTC,Night the First,"",,"","",Reading,20389,7399
"What high Perfections grace the human Mind,
In Flesh imprison'd, and to Earth confin'd!
What Vigour has she? What a piercing Sight?
Strong as the Winds, and sprightly as the Light?
She moves unweary'd, as the active Fire,
And, like the Flame, her Flights to Heav'n aspire.
By Day her Thoughts in never-ceasing Streams
Flow clear, by Night they strive in troubled Dreams.
She draws ten thousand Landschapes in the Brain,
Dresses of airy Forms an endless Train,
Which all her Intellectual Scenes prepare,
Enter by turns the Stage, and disappear.
To the remoter Regions of the Sky
Her swift-wing'd Thought can in a Moment fly;
Climb to the Heights of Heav'n, to be employ'd
In viewing thence th'Interminable Void.
Can look beyond the Stream of Time, to see
The stagnant Ocean of Eternity.
Thoughts in an Instant thro' the Zodiack run,
A Year's long Journey for the lab'ring Sun:
Then down they shoot, as swift as darting Light,
Nor can opposing Clouds retard their Flight:
Thro' Subterranean Vaults with Ease they sweep,
And search the hidden Wonders of the Deep.
(VII, ll. 204-227, pp. 323-4)",2013-08-07 16:54:23 UTC,"""Strong as the Winds, and sprightly as the Light? / She [the mind] moves unweary'd, as the active Fire, / And, like the Flame, her Flights to Heav'n aspire.""",2013-08-07 16:54:23 UTC,Book VII,"",,"","",Reading,22106,4167
"Thus have I vainly strove, with strokes too faint,
Love, in his known, and outward marks, to paint;
Unmindful, that, of old, they veil'd his face,
And wisely cover'd, what they could not trace.
Lovely creator of my soul's soft pain,
Pity the pencil, that aspir'd in vain:
Vers'd in love's pangs, and taught his pow'r, by you,
Skill'd, I presum'd, that what I felt, I drew;
But I have err'd; and, with delirious aim,
Would picture motion, and imprison flame.
He, who can light'ning's flash, to colours, bind,
May paint love's influence, on the burning mind.
Then, when we master him, and give him law,
Then may we chain him, and his image draw:
But who would bind this god, must, captive take,
A power, which all mankind can captive make;
I am too weak of heart; yet, I can tell
Those, who dare seize him, where he loves to dwell.
I see him now; in his own heav'n, he lies,
Close at sweet ambush, in Miranda 's eyes.
(pp. 171-190; cf. pp. 203-4)",2014-06-11 21:19:22 UTC,"""But I have err'd; and, with delirious aim, / Would picture motion, and imprison flame. / He, who can light'ning's flash, to colours, bind, / May paint love's influence, on the burning mind.""",2014-06-11 21:19:22 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,23955,4906