work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3258,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2005-02-06 00:00:00 UTC," Whate'er you write of pleasant or sublime,
Always let sense accompany your rhyme.
Falsely they seem each other to oppose;
Rhyme must be made with Reason's laws to close;
And when to conquer her you bend your force,
The mind will triumph in the noble course.
To Reason's yoke she quickly will incline,
Which, far from hurting, renders her divine;
But if neglected, will as easily stray,
And master Reason, which she should obey.
Love Reason, then; and let whate'er you write
Borrow from her its beauty, force, and light.
Most writers mounted on a resty muse,
Extravagant and senseless objects chuse;
They think they err, if in their verse they fall
On any thought that's plain or natural.
Fly this excess; and let Italians be
Vain authors of false glittering poetry.
All ought to aim at sense; but most in vain
Strive the hard pass and slippery path to gain;
You drown, if to the right or left you stray;
Reason to go has often but one way.
Sometimes an author, fond of his own thought,
Pursues its object till it's overwrought:
If he describes a house, he shows the face,
And after walks you round from place to place;
Here is a vista, there the doors unfold,
Balconies here are ballustred with gold;
Then counts the rounds and ovals in the halls,
""The festoons, friezes, and the astragals:""
Tired with his tedious pomp, away I run,
And skip o'er twenty pages, to be gone.
Of such descriptions the vain folly see,
And shun their barren superfluity.
All that is needless carefully avoid;
The mind once satisfied is quickly cloyed:
He cannot write, who knows not to give o'er;
To mend one fault, he makes a hundred more:
A verse was weak, you turn it much too strong,
And grow obscure for fear you should be long.
Some are not gaudy, but are flat and dry;
Not to be low, another soars too high.
Would you of every one deserve the praise?
In writing vary your discourse and phrase;
A frozen style, that neither ebbs nor flows,
Instead of pleasing, makes us gape and dose.
Those tedious authors are esteemed by none
Who tire us, humming the same heavy tone.
Happy who in his verse can gently steer,
From grave to light; from pleasant to severe:
His works will be admired wherever found,
And oft with buyers will be compassed round.
In all you write, be neither low nor vile;
The meanest theme may have a proper style.",2011-06-27,8514,"","""Falsely they [sense and rhyme] seem each other to oppose; / Rhyme must be made with Reason's laws to close; / And when to conquer her you bend your force, / The mind will triumph in the noble course.""",Court,2011-06-28 02:17:38 UTC,""
3258,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2005-02-06 00:00:00 UTC,"Whate'er you write of pleasant or sublime,
Always let sense accompany your rhyme.
Falsely they seem each other to oppose;
Rhyme must be made with Reason's laws to close;
And when to conquer her you bend your force,
The mind will triumph in the noble course.
To Reason's yoke she quickly will incline,
Which, far from hurting, renders her divine;
But if neglected, will as easily stray,
And master Reason, which she should obey.
Love Reason, then; and let whate'er you write
Borrow from her its beauty, force, and light.
Most writers mounted on a resty muse,
Extravagant and senseless objects chuse;
They think they err, if in their verse they fall
On any thought that's plain or natural.
Fly this excess; and let Italians be
Vain authors of false glittering poetry.
All ought to aim at sense; but most in vain
Strive the hard pass and slippery path to gain;
You drown, if to the right or left you stray;
Reason to go has often but one way.
Sometimes an author, fond of his own thought,
Pursues its object till it's overwrought:
If he describes a house, he shows the face,
And after walks you round from place to place;
Here is a vista, there the doors unfold,
Balconies here are ballustred with gold;
Then counts the rounds and ovals in the halls,
""The festoons, friezes, and the astragals:""
Tired with his tedious pomp, away I run,
And skip o'er twenty pages, to be gone.
Of such descriptions the vain folly see,
And shun their barren superfluity.
All that is needless carefully avoid;
The mind once satisfied is quickly cloyed:
He cannot write, who knows not to give o'er;
To mend one fault, he makes a hundred more:
A verse was weak, you turn it much too strong,
And grow obscure for fear you should be long.
Some are not gaudy, but are flat and dry;
Not to be low, another soars too high.
Would you of every one deserve the praise?
In writing vary your discourse and phrase;
A frozen style, that neither ebbs nor flows,
Instead of pleasing, makes us gape and dose.
Those tedious authors are esteemed by none
Who tire us, humming the same heavy tone.
Happy who in his verse can gently steer,
From grave to light; from pleasant to severe:
His works will be admired wherever found,
And oft with buyers will be compassed round.
In all you write, be neither low nor vile;
The meanest theme may have a proper style.
",,8515,"","""To Reason's yoke she quickly will incline, / Which, far from hurting, renders her divine; / But if neglected, will as easily stray, / And master Reason, which she should obey.""","",2011-06-27 21:23:31 UTC,""
3258,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2005-05-12 00:00:00 UTC,"The theatre for a young poet's rhymes
Is a bold venture in our knowing times:
An author cannot easily purchase fame;
Critics are always apt to hiss, and blame:
You may be judged by every ass in town,
The privilege is bought for half-a-crown.
To please, you must a hundred changes try;
Sometimes be humble, then must soar on high;
In noble thoughts must everywhere abound,
Be easy, pleasant, solid, and profound;
To these you must surprising touches join,
And show us a new wonder in each line;
That all, in a just method well-designed,
May leave a strong impression in the mind.
These are the arts that tragedy maintain:",,8587,"","Surprising touches and ""a just method well-designed, / May leave a strong impression in the mind""",Impressions,2011-06-06 03:00:41 UTC,""
3258,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2006-01-18 00:00:00 UTC,"Would you in this great art acquire renown?
Authors, observe the rules I here lay down.
In prudent lessons everywhere abound;
With pleasant join the useful and the sound:
A sober reader a vain tale will slight;
He seeks as well instruction as delight.
Let all your thoughts to virtue be confined,
Still offering nobler figures to our mind:
I like not those loose writers, who employ
Their guilty muse, good manners to destroy;
Who with false colours still deceive our eyes,
And show us vice dressed in a fair disguise.
Yet do I not their sullen muse approve,
Who from all most writings banish love;
That stript the playhouse of its chief intrigue,
And make a murderer of Roderigue:
The lightest love, if decently exprest,
Will raise no vicious motions in our breast.
Dido in vain may weep, and ask relief;
I blame her folly, whilst I share her grief.
A virtuous author, in his charming art,
To please the sense needs not corrupt the heart:
His heat will never cause a guilty fire:
To follow virtue then be your desire.
In vain your art and vigour are exprest;
The obscene expression shows the infected breast.
But, above all, base jealousies avoid,
In which detracting poets are employed.
A noble wit dares liberally commend,
And scorns to grudge at his deserving friend.
Base rivals, who true wit and merit hate,
Caballing still against it with the great,
Maliciously aspire to great renown,
By standing up, and pulling others down.
Never debase yourself by treacherous ways,
Nor by such abject methods seek for praise:
Let not your only business be to write;
Be virtuous, just, and in your friends delight.
'Tis not enough your poems be admired;
But strive your conversation be desired:
Write for immortal fame; nor ever chuse
Gold for the object of a generous muse.
I know a noble wit may, without crime,
Receive a lawful tribute for his time:
Yet I abhor those writers, who despise
Their honour, and alone their profits prize;
Who their Apollo basely will degrade,
And of a noble science make a trade.
Before kind Reason did her light display,
And government taught mortals to obey,
Men, like wild beasts, did nature's laws pursue,
They fed on herbs, and drink from waters drew;
Their brutal force, on lust and rapine bent,
Committed murder without punishment:
Reason at last, by her all-conquering arts,
Reduced these savages, and tuned their hearts;
Mankind from bogs, and woods, and caverns calls,
And towns and cities fortifies with walls:
Thus fear of justice made proud rapine cease,
And sheltered innocence by laws and peace.",,8659,"","""Reason at last, by her all-conquering arts, / Reduced these savages, and tuned their hearts.""","",2011-05-25 20:53:15 UTC,""
3785,"","Searching ""conque"" and ""heart"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-02-09 00:00:00 UTC,"Hor.
Now Chloes charming Voice, and Art
Have gain'd the conquest of my Heart:
For whom, ye Fates, I'd wish to die,
If mine the Nymphs dear Life might buy.
",,9746,"","A ""charming Voice, and Art"" may gain ""the conquest of my Heart","",2009-09-14 19:34:27 UTC,""
3800,"","Searching ""haunt"" and ""mind"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2004-06-08 00:00:00 UTC,"Meantime, when thoughts of death disturb thy head,
Consider, Ancus, great and good, is dead;
Ancus, thy better far, was born to die,
And thou, dost thou bewail mortality?
So many monarchs with their mighty state,
Who ruled the world, were overruled by fate.
That haughty king, who lorded o'er the main,
And whose stupendous bridge did the wild waves restrain,
(In vain they foamed, in vain they threatened wreck,
While his proud legions marched upon their back,)
Him death, a greater monarch, overcame;
Nor spared his guards the more, for their immortal name.
The Roman chief, the Carthaginian dread,
Scipio, the thunderbolt of war, is dead,
And, like a common slave, by fate in triumph led.
The founders of invented arts are lost,
And wits, who made eternity their boast.
Where now is Homer, who possessed the throne?
The immortal work remains, the immortal author's gone.
Democritus, perceiving age invade,
His body weakened, and his mind decayed,
Obeyed the summons with a cheerful face;
Made haste to welcome death, and met him half the race.
That stroke even Epicurus could not bar,
Though he in wit surpassed mankind, as far
As does the midday sun the midnight star.
And thou, dost thou disdain to yield thy breath,
Whose very life is little more than death?
More than one half by lazy sleep possest;
And when awake, thy soul but nods at best,
Day-dreams and sickly thoughts revolving in thy breast,
Eternal troubles haunt thy anxious mind,
Whose cause and cure thou never hop'st to find;
But still uncertain, with thyself at strife,
Thou wanderest in the labyrinth of life.
Oh, if the foolish race of man, who find
A weight of cares still pressing on their mind,
Could find as well the cause of this unrest,
And all this burden lodged within the breast;
Sure they would change their course, nor live as now,
Uncertain what to wish, or what to vow.
Uneasy both in country and in town,
They search a place to lay their burden down.
One, restless in his palace, walks abroad,
And vainly thinks to leave behind the load,
But straight returns; for he's as restless there,
And finds there's no relief in open-air.
Another to his villa would retire,
And spurs as hard as if it were on fire;
No sooner entered at his country door,
But he begins to stretch, and yawn, and snore,
Or seeks the city, which he left before.
Thus every man o'erworks his weary will,
To shun himself, and to shake off his ill;
The shaking fit returns, and hangs upon him still.
No prospect of repose, nor hope of ease,
The wretch is ignorant of his disease;
Which, known, would all his fruitless trouble spare,
For he would know the world not worth his care:
Then would he search more deeply for the cause,
And study nature well, and nature's laws;
For in this moment lies not the debate,
But on our future, fixed, eternal state;
That never-changing state, which all must keep,
Whom death has doomed to everlasting sleep.
Why are we then so fond of mortal life,
Beset with dangers, and maintained with strife?
A life, which all our care can never save;
One fate attends us, and one common grave.
Besides, we tread but a perpetual round;
We ne'er strike out, but beat the former ground,
And the same mawkish joys in the same track are found.
For still we think an absent blessing best,
Which cloys, and is no blessing when possest;
A new arising wish expels it from the breast.
The feverish thirst of life increases still;
We call for more and more, and never have our fill;
Yet know not what to-morrow we shall try,
What dregs of life in the last draught may lie.
Nor, by the longest life we can attain,
One moment from the length of death we gain;
For all behind belongs to his eternal reign.
When once the fates have cut the mortal thread,
The man as much to all intents is dead,
Who dies to-day, and will as long be so,
As he who died a thousand years ago.
",,9795,"•The passage is rich with metaphorics. REVISIT.
•Cross-reference: his may be one source for Pope's""A mighty maze!"" in Essay on Man I.6",Eternal troubles may haunt an anxious mind,"",2009-09-14 19:34:29 UTC,""
3809,"","Searching ""heart"" and ""coin"" in HDIS (Poetry); Found again ""gold""",2005-04-14 00:00:00 UTC,"CHLORIS.
You tear off all behind me, and before me;
And I'm as naked as my mother bore me.
DAPHNIS.
I'll buy thee better clothes than these I tear,
And lie so close I'll cover thee from air.
CHLORIS.
You're liberal now; but when your turn is sped,
You'll wish me choked with every crust of bread.
DAPHNIS.
I'll give thee more, much more than I have told;
Would I could coin my very heart to gold!",2007-04-26,9806,"","""Would I could coin my very heart to gold!""",Coinage,2009-09-14 19:34:29 UTC,""
3813,"","Searching ""inward"" and ""mind"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2004-06-08 00:00:00 UTC,"Tis pleasant, safely to behold from shore
The rolling ship, and hear the tempest roar;
Not that another's pain is our delight,
But pains unfelt produce the pleasing sight.
'Tis pleasant also to behold from far
The moving legions mingled in the war;
But much more sweet thy labouring steps to guide
To virtue's heights, with wisdom well supplied,
And all the magazines of learning fortified;
From thence to look below on humankind,
Bewildered in the maze of life, and blind;
To see vain fools ambitiously contend
For wit and power; their last endeavours bend
To outshine each other, waste their time and health
In search of honour, and pursuit of wealth.
O wretched man! in what a mist of life,
Inclosed with dangers and with noisy strife,
He spends his little span; and overfeeds
His crammed desires, with more than nature needs!
For nature wisely stints our appetite,
And craves no more than undisturbed delight;
Which minds, unmixed with cares and fears, obtain;
A soul serene, a body void of pain.
So little this corporeal frame requires,
So bounded are our natural desires,
That wanting all, and setting pain aside,
With bare privation sense is satisfied.
If golden sconces hang not on the walls,
To light the costly suppers and the balls;
If the proud palace shines not with the state
Of burnished bowls, and of reflected plate;
If well-tuned harps, nor the more pleasing sound
Of voices, from the vaulted roofs rebound;
Yet on the grass, beneath a poplar shade,
By the cool stream, our careless limbs are laid;
With cheaper pleasures innocently blest,
When the warm spring with gaudy flowers is drest.
Nor will the raging fever's fire abate,
With golden canopies, and beds of state;
But the poor patient will as soon be sound
On the hard mattress, or the mother ground.
Then since our bodies are not eased the more
By birth, or power, or fortune's wealthy store,
'Tis plain, these useless toys of every kind
As little can relieve the labouring mind;
Unless we could suppose the dreadful sight
Of marshalled legions moving to the fight,
Could, with their sound and terrible array,
Expel our fears, and drive the thoughts of death away.
But, since the supposition vain appears,
Since clinging cares, and trains of inbred fears,
Are not with sounds to be affrighted thence,
But in the midst of pomp pursue the prince,
Not awed by arms, but in the presence bold,
Without respect to purple, or to gold;
Why should not we these pageantries despise,
Whose worth but in our want of reason lies?
For life is all in wandering errors led;
And just as children are surprised with dread,
And tremble in the dark, so riper years,
Even in broad day-light, are possessed with fears,
And shake at shadows fanciful and vain,
As those which in the breasts of children reign.
These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell,
No rays of outward sunshine can dispel;
But nature and right reason must display
Their beams abroad, and bring the darksome soul to day.",,9818,"•I've included thrice: Hell, Beam, Darkness","""These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell, / No rays of outward sunshine can dispel; / But nature and right reason must display / Their beams abroad, and bring the darksome soul to day.""","",2009-09-14 19:34:30 UTC,""
3882,"","HDIS; Found again searching ""conque"" and ""mind"" in HDIS (Poetry) (2/6/2005)",2004-01-05 00:00:00 UTC,"On its own Worth True Majesty is rear'd,
And Virtue is her own Reward,
With solid Beams and Native Glory bright,
She neither Darkness dreads, nor covets Light;
True to Her self, and fix'd to inborn Laws,
Nor sunk by Spite, nor lifted by Applause,
She from her settl'd Orb looks calmly down,
On Life or Death a Prison or a Crown.
When bound in double Chains poor Belgia lay,
To foreign Arms, and inward Strife a Prey,
Whilst One Good Man buoy'd up Her sinking State,
And Virtue labour'd against Fate;
When Fortune basely with Ambition join'd,
And all was conquer'd but the Patriot's Mind;
When Storms let loose, and raging Seas
Just ready the torn Vessel to o'erwhelm,
Forc'd not the faithful Pilot from his Helm;
Nor all the Syren Songs of future Peace,
And dazling Prospect of a promis'd Crown,
Cou'd lure his stubborn Virtue down;
But against Charms, and Threats, and Hell, He stood,
To that which was severely good;
Then, had no Trophies justify'd his Fame,
No Poet bless'd his Song with Nassau's Name,
Virtue alone did all that Honour bring,
And Heav'n as plainly pointed out the King,
As when he at the Altar stood,
In all his Types and Robes of Powr,
Whilst at his Feet Religious Britain bow'd,
And own'd him next to what we there Adore.
(ll. 130-165, pp. 118-9)",,10054,•Republished 1714 and 1715.,"""And all was conquer'd but the Patriot's Mind.""",Empire,2013-07-22 15:02:09 UTC,""
7521,"",Reading,2013-07-10 21:20:32 UTC,"Some Sons, indeed, some very few, we see
Who keep themselves from this Infection free,
Whom Gracious Heaven for Nobler Ends design'd,
Their Looks erected, and their Clay refin'd.
The rest are all by bad Example led,
And in their Father's slimy Track they tread.
Is't not enough we should our selves undo,
But that our Children we must Ruin too?
Children, like tender Osiers, take the bow,
And as they first are Fashion'd, always grow.
By Nature, headlong to all Ills we run,
And Virtue, like some dreadful Monster, shun.
Survey the World, and where on Cato Shines,
Count a degenerate Herd of Catilines.
(pp. 277-8)",,21622,"OED: An osier is ""Any of several willows with tough pliant branches used in basketwork, esp. Salix viminalis; (also) a flexible branch of any of these willows. Also with distinguishing word.""
Note, the distich is cited as a commonplace in the eighteenth century. See for example, Edward Bysshe's Art of English Poetry (1718), ""Education""; Eliza Haywood's Female Spectator, book x; Samuel Whyte's The Shamrock (1772), p. 277n; Ignatius Sanchos's Letters (1782), vol. I, letter xxviii; and various other works. ","""Children, like tender Oziers, take the Bow, / And, as they first are fashion'd always grow.""","",2013-07-11 14:49:41 UTC,""