work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5763,"","Searching ""bosom"" and ""steel"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-06-13 00:00:00 UTC,"E'en at the last, thou still my sight shalt bless,
And my weak hand shall strive thy hand to press.
How wilt thou mourn, and droop thy pensive head,
When on my bed of death I shall be laid!
Yes, thou wilt mourn, my pale, cold limbs embrace,
And bathe with ineffectual tears my face.
Thou hast no flinty heart which cannot feel,
Thy bosom is not braced with chains of steel.
With streaming eyes see me inhumed in clay,
Nor force shall tear thee from my grave away.
Yet oh! thy cheeks at that dread moment spare,
Nor rend the flowing tresses of thy hair!
Tho torn from thee by death's relentless will,
My conscious soul shall fondly view thee still.",2011-05-23,15350,•I've included twice: Armor and Flint,"""Thou hast no flinty heart which cannot feel, / Thy bosom is not braced with chains of steel.""",Metal,2011-05-26 19:02:38 UTC,""
5775,"",Reading,2009-09-14 19:43:34 UTC,"Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it--if I may so express myself--swathed from their birth, seldom exert that locomotive faculty or body of mind, and thus viewing everything through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist. False, indeed, must be the light when the drapery of situation hides the man, and makes him stalk in masquerade, dragging from one scene of dissipation to another the nerveless limbs that hang with stupid listlessness, and rolling round the vacant eye, which plainly tells us that there is no mind at home.
(p. 142)",2003-10-22,15411,"•Is this a misprint (""locomotive faculty or body of mind"")? REVISIT.","""Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it--if I may so express myself--swathed from their birth, seldom exert that locomotive faculty or body of mind""","",2009-09-14 19:43:34 UTC,""
5802,"",Reading,2003-07-28 00:00:00 UTC,"'Behold that macaroni Lord!
So gay in clothes--profuse in board,
His fine apparel marks the fool,
And points him out for ridicule;
Proud as a peacock he appears,
Though to his tradesmen he arrears;
I know that his estate is dipped,
His name disgraced, his woodlands stripped,
To dress that carcase, and support
An idle puppy of the court,
A useless brawler in the House,
Whose brains would hardly serve a louse.
His pocket and his skull are brothers,
They thrive by borrowing from others;
I thank my stars, with heart sincere,
I was not born to be a Peer;
Make me an Alderman, kind fate!
And let these glory in their state.'
(ll. 59-76, p. 342)",2003-10-22,15470,"•Implied analogy or true analogy?
•I don't know (10/22/2003).
• Note, that ""brothers"" is a metaphor for metaphor. (6/17/2011)","""His pocket and his skull are brothers, / They thrive by borrowing from others; / I thank my stars, with heart sincere, / I was not born to be a Peer.""","",2011-06-17 17:19:14 UTC,""
5903,"","Reading Earl R. Wasserman's ""The Inherent Values of Eighteenth-Century Personification."" PMLA 65.4 (1950): 435-63. p. 442. Confirmed in ECCO.",2006-06-01 00:00:00 UTC,"[...] In his endeavours to embody the fleeting forms of mind, and clothe them with correspondent imagery, he is not unfrequently obscure; but even when obscure, the reader who possesses congenial feelings is not ill pleased to find his faculties put upon the stretch in the search of those sublime ideas which are apt, from their shadowy nature, to elude the grasp of the mind.
(p. vii.)",2008-12-03,15670,"","In William Collins's ""endeavours to embody the fleeting forms of mind, and clothe them with correspondent imagery, he is not infrequently obscure.""","",2014-03-08 18:12:07 UTC,""
6611,Dress of Thought,Reading,2009-12-02 18:23:29 UTC,"Our penal laws punish with death the thief who steals a few pounds; but to take by violence, or trepan, a man, is no such heinous offence.– For who shall dare to complain of the venerable vestige of the law that rendered the life of a deer more sacred than that of a man? But it was the poor man with only his native dignity who was thus oppressed – and only metaphysical sophists and cold mathematicians can discern this insubstantial form; it is a work of abstraction – and a gentleman of lively imagination must borrow some drapery from fancy before he can love or pity a man. — Misery, to reach your heart, I perceive, must have its cap and bells; your tears are reserved, very naturally considering your character, for the declamation of the theatre, or for the downfall of queens, whose rank alters the nature of folly, and throws a graceful veil over vices that degrade humanity; whilst the distress of many industrious mothers, whose helpmates have been torn from them, and the hungry cry of helpless babes, were vulgar sorrows that could not move your commiseration, though they might extort an alms. ‘The tears that are shed for fictitious sorrow are admirably adapted,’ says Rousseau, ‘to make us proud of all the virtues which we do not possess.’
(p. 45)",,17535,"","""But it was the poor man with only his native dignity who was thus oppressed – and only metaphysical sophists and cold mathematicians can discern this insubstantial form; it is a work of abstraction – and a gentleman of lively imagination must borrow some drapery from fancy before he can love or pity a man.""","",2009-12-02 18:24:05 UTC,""
5736,"",Reading,2013-05-31 22:44:22 UTC,"But a new affliction was preparing for the marquis, which attacked him where he was most vulnerable; and the veil which had so long overshadowed his reason was now to be removed. He was informed by Baptista of the infidelity of Maria de Vellorno. In the first emotion of passion, he spurned the informer from his presence, and disdained to believe the circumstance. A little reflection changed the object of his resentment; he recalled the servant, whose faithfulness he had no reason to distrust, and condescended to interrogate him on the subject of his misfortune.
(II.xv, p. 185; p. 185 in OUP edition)",,20295,"","""But a new affliction was preparing for the marquis, which attacked him where he was most vulnerable; and the veil which had so long overshadowed his reason was now to be removed.""","",2013-05-31 22:44:22 UTC,"Volume II, Chapter XV"
7428,"",Reading,2013-06-13 15:51:43 UTC,"Sonnet XLVIII.
To Mrs. ****
No more my wearied soul attempts to stray
From sad reality and vain regret,
Nor courts enchanting fiction to allay
Sorrows that sense refuses to forget:
For of calamity so long the prey,
Imagination now has lost her powers,
Nor will her fairy loom again essay
To dress affliction in a robe of flowers.
But if no more the bowers of Fancy bloom
Let one superior scene attract my view,
Where heav'ns pure rays the sacred spot illume,
Let thy lov'd hand with palm and amaranth stew
The mournful path approaching to the tomb,
While Faith's consoling voice endears the friendly gloom. ",,20619,"","""For of calamity so long the prey, / Imagination now has lost her powers, / Nor will her fairy loom again essay / To dress affliction in a robe of flowers.""","",2013-06-13 15:51:43 UTC,""
7542,"",Reading; text from Google Books. OCR typo caught and corrected by Andrew Dobson.,2013-07-12 15:01:03 UTC,"In every country it is social pleasure that sheds the most delicious flowers which grow on the path of life; but in France she covers the whole way with roses, and the traveller can scarcely mark its ruggedness. Happy are a people, so fond of talking as the French, in possessing a language modelled to all the charming purposes of conversation. Their turn of expression is a dress that hangs so gracefully on gay ideas, that you are apt to suppose that wit, a quality parsimoniously distributed in other countries, is in France as common as the gift of speech. Perhaps that brilliant phraseology which dazzles a foreigner, may be familiar and common to a French ear: but how much ingenuity must we allow to a people who have formed a language, of which the common-place phrases give you the idea of wit!
(Letter XXIII, pp. 197-8; p. 141 in Broadview ed.)",,21703,"","""Their turn of expression is a dress that hangs so gracefully on gay ideas, that you are apt to suppose that wit, a quality parsimoniously distributed in other countries, is in France as common as the gift of speech.""","",2016-01-25 18:45:45 UTC,Letter XXIII
7835,"",ECCO-TCP,2014-03-11 21:35:55 UTC,"""It was but yesterday,"" she continued; ""but a few short hours have passed since I was dear to him; he esteemed me, and my heart was satisfied: now, oh! now, how cruelly is my situation changed! He looks on me with suspicion; he bids me leave him, leave him for ever. Oh! you, my saint, my idol! You! holding the next place to God in my breast, yet two days, and my heart will be unveiled to you. Could you know my feelings, when I beheld your agony! Could you know how much your sufferings have endeared you to me! But the time will come, when you will be convinced that my passion is pure and disinterested. Then you will pity me, and feel the whole weight of these sorrows.""
(I, p. 138)",,23539,"","""You! holding the next place to God in my breast, yet two days, and my heart will be unveiled to you.""","",2014-03-11 21:35:55 UTC,""