work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5726,"","Searching ""mind"" and ""bank"" in HDIS (Poetry); confirmed in ECCO",2005-05-31 00:00:00 UTC,"My recollection portrays all the past,
The bliss was sure too exquisite to last:
When Henry's supplication fill'd my days,
And every echo warbled Gabrielle's praise;
Train'd from my reason's dawn in noble deeds,
I sung of Virtue, and I sought her meeds:
My pliant fancy yielded to embrace
Those laws of honor, which upheld my race:
Oh! hesitate, ye generous nymphs, I pray,
Ere ye condemn the tenor of my lay.
Knew ye the sorcery that freights his tale,
Alas, you'd marvel not that men prevail!
A king, a hero, brilliant, wise and great,
Who seems the favor'd delegate of fate;
When such assail the melting virgin's breast,
Love is all-governing, and fear a jest.
With soft solicitude, with matchless charms,
He came, he woo'd, he won me to his arms!
So regal Jove his tender wishes told,
When the high ruler found Alcmena cold--
He swore his love should with his being last,
But scarce was sworn before that love was past:
Such vows, like poppies, mid the golden grain,
Tho' gay, are worthless, tho' alluring, vain:
When Passion's tides thro' mans' strong art'ries roar,
His heart resists them like a flinty shore;
But our frail frames, like mould'ring banks, give way,
Our mind's unhelm'd, our attributes decay--
His bright, his keen, his fascinating eyes,
Like wond'rous basilisks seduce their prize.
Go not, ye nymphs, you'll perish if you gaze,
For necromancy warms their weakest blaze!
If in the vortex of his arts you're found,
Your agency will die, your sense run round.
There Ruin's baneful circles never cease,
Till central potency ingulphs your peace!
(cf. pp. 24-5 in 1788 printing)",,15260,•I've included twice: Flinty Shore and Tide,"""When Passion's tides thro' mans' strong art'ries roar, / His heart resists them like a flinty shore; / But our frail frames, like mould'ring banks, give way.""","",2014-02-26 21:59:56 UTC,""
5748,"",HDIS,2004-01-02 00:00:00 UTC,"Now, brother, whence this milkiness of mind,
These scruples about blood? Thy Trojan friends
Have doubtless much obliged thee. Die the race!
May none escape us! Neither he who flies,
Nor even the infant in his mother's womb
Unconscious. Perish universal Troy
Unpitied, till her place be found no more!
()",,15308,•
,The mind may be milky,"",2009-09-14 19:43:18 UTC,""
5748,"",HDIS,2004-01-02 00:00:00 UTC,"So saying, he pierced the neck of Dryops through,
And at his feet he fell. Him there he left,
And turning on a valiant warrior huge,
Philetor's son, Demuchus, in the knee
Pierced, and detain'd him by the planted spear,
Till with his sword he smote him, and he died.
Laogonus and Dardanus he next
Assaulted, sons of Bias; to the ground
Dismounting both, one with his spear he slew,
The other with his faulchion at a blow.
Tros too, Alastor's son--He suppliant clasp'd
Achilles' knees, and for his pity sued,
Pleading equality of years, in hope
That he would spare, and send him thence alive.
Ah dreamer! ignorant how much in vain
That suit he urged; for not of milky mind,
Or placable in temper was the Chief
To whom he sued, but fiery. With both hands
His knees he clasp'd importunate, and he
Fast by the liver gash'd him with his sword.
His liver falling forth, with sable blood
His bosom fill'd, and darkness veil'd his eyes.
Then, drawing close to Mulius, in his ear
He set the pointed brass, and at a thrust
Sent it, next moment, through his ear beyond.
Then, through the forehead of Agenor's son
Echechlus, his huge-hafted blade he drove,
And death and fate for ever veil'd his eyes.
Next, where the tendons of the elbow meet,
Striking Deucalion, through his wrist he urged
The brazen point; he all defenceless stood,
Expecting death; down came Achilles' blade
Full on his neck; away went head and casque
Together; from his spine the marrow sprang,
And at his length outstretch'd he press'd the plain.
From him to Rhigmus, Pireus' noble son,
He flew, a warrior from the fields of Thrace.
Him through the loins he pierced, and with the beam
Fixt in his bowels, to the earth he fell;
Then piercing, as he turn'd to flight, the spine
Of Areithöus his charioteer,
He thrust him from his seat; wild with dismay
Back flew the fiery coursers at his fall.
As a devouring fire within the glens
Of some dry mountain ravages the trees,
While, blown around, the flames roll to all sides,
So, on all sides, terrible as a God,
Achilles drove the death-devoted host
Of Ilium, and the champain ran with blood.
As when the peasant his yoked steers employs
To tread his barley, the broad-fronted pair
With ponderous hoofs trample it out with ease,
So, by magnanimous Achilles driven,
His coursers solid-hoof'd stamp'd as they ran
The shields, at once, and bodies of the slain;
Blood spatter'd all his axle, and with blood
From the horse-hoofs and from the fellied wheels
His chariot redden'd, while himself, athirst
For glory, his unconquerable hands
Defiled with mingled carnage, sweat, and dust. ",,15312,
,"One may have a ""milky mind""","",2009-09-14 19:43:19 UTC,""
5748,"",HDIS,2004-01-02 00:00:00 UTC,"My Hero! thou hast fallen in prime of life,
Me leaving here desolate, and the fruit
Of our ill-fated loves, an helpless child,
Whom grown to manhood I despair to see.
For ere that day arrive, down from her height
Precipitated shall this city fall,
Since thou hast perish'd once her sure defence,
Faithful protector of her spotless wives,
And all their little ones. Those wives shall soon
In Greecian barks capacious hence be borne,
And I among the rest. But thee, my child!
Either thy fate shall with thy mother send
Captive into a land where thou shalt serve
In sordid drudgery some cruel lord,
Or haply some Achaian here, thy hand
Seizing, shall hurl thee from a turret-top
To a sad death, avenging brother, son,
Or father by the hands of Hector slain;
For He made many a Greecian bite the ground.
Thy father, boy, bore never into fight
A milky mind, and for that self-same cause
Is now bewail'd in every house of Troy.
Sorrow unutterable thou hast caused
Thy parents, Hector! but to me hast left
Largest bequest of misery, to whom,
Dying, thou neither didst thy arms extend
Forth from thy bed, nor gavest me precious word
To be remember'd day and night with tears. ",,15314,
,"One may bear a ""milky mind""","",2009-09-14 19:43:19 UTC,""
6165,"",HDIS,2003-12-30 00:00:00 UTC,"Thus Italy was moved;--nor did the chief
Æneas in his mind less tumult feel.
On every side his anxious thought he turns,
Restless, unfix'd, not knowing what to choose.
And as a cistern that in brim of brass
Confines the crystal flood, if chance the sun
Smite on it, or the moon's resplendent orb,
The quivering light now flashes on the walls,
Now leaps uncertain to the vaulted roof:
Such were the wavering motions of his mind.
'Twas night--and weary nature sunk to rest;
The birds, the bleating flocks, were heard no more.
At length, on the cold ground, beneath the damp
And dewy vault, fast by the river's brink,
The father of his country sought repose.
When lo! among the spreading poplar boughs,
Forth from his pleasant stream, propitious rose
The god of Tiber: clear transparent gauze
Infolds his loins, his brows with reeds are crown'd;
And these his gracious words to sooth his care:
(ll. 1-20, pp. 83-4)",,16331,"•I've included entries in both 'Liquid' and 'Optics'.
•First printed in Poems, by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq. in Three Volumes. Vol III. Containing his posthumous poetry, and a sketch of his life. By his kinsman, John Johnson, LL.D., 1815.
","The wavering motions of the mind are like ""quivering light"" reflected off a confined ""crystal flood"" in a brass cistern","",2009-09-14 19:46:32 UTC,""