work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3232,"","Searching ""throne"" and ""heart"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2004-08-07 00:00:00 UTC,"This verse, O gentle Hamilton! be thine,
(Each softer grace bedew thy darling shrine);
Nature to thee did her best gifts impart,
The mildest manners and the warmest heart;
Honour erected in thy breast its throne,
And kind Humanity was all thy own.
Yet when thy country's wrong to action moved,
You rose to save, and left that ease you loved;
For this she grieves thy early fate to see;
And 'midst her sufferings finds a tear for thee.
But thou perhaps hast well escaped her doom,
Thy eyes are closed, nor sees her ills to come;
Abandon'd o'er, to shameless men a prey,
And slow, deceiving friends, far worse than they;
The kindred triumph of thy noble blood,
Thy name enroll'd amidst the few that stood.
Fair, beaming clear, through life, the patriot flame,
And deaf to honours that begun in shame;
Each duty paid that friendship could demand;
Each nobler deed to save a destin'd land.
An age, corrupt amidst the civil storm,
Would suffer struggling Virtue to perform;
To fix his country, ever free, he tried--
Found the brave labour vain, resigned, and died.
(cf. p. 259 in 1760 ed.)",2012-01-12,8482,I've included the entire poem,"""Honour erected in thy breast its throne, / And kind Humanity was all thy own.""",Throne,2014-08-20 04:14:08 UTC,""
3248,"","Searching ""judge within"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2004-08-26 00:00:00 UTC,"Hear me, O youths! whose now impending fates
The extreme of joy or misery awaits,
Or still to mourn your unavailing vows,
Or victor in the strife enjoy the spouse.
Then who shall first begin the important lay
Let lots determine, and those lots obey.
This coin, ordained through Scotia's realm to pass,
The monarch's face refulgent on the brass;
Fair, on the side opposed, the thistle rears
Its wand'ring foliage and its bristly spears.
This, from my hand flung upwards in the sky,
In countless circles whirls its orb on high;
If, when descended on the level ground,
The monarch's awful visage upward's found,
Then thou, O Fiddler, shall thy skill employ
The first, to try the song of grief or joy.
If, undeprised upon the blushing green
Its chance directs, the thistle's front is seen,
The Piper first the sweet melodious strain
Shall urge, and finish or increase his pain.
But thou, O Elspet, fair beyond the rest,
Whose fatal beauty breeds the dire contest,
O heedful of advice, attentive hear
My faithful counsels with no careless ear.
Fair (though) thou art, yet fairer have there been,
Such as of old these aged orbs have seen.
Lives there a maiden now that can compare
With Agnew's downy breasts and amber hair?
O, when shall I again the match behold
Of sprightly Henny, and her cheeks of gold!
Or her, adorn'd with every blushing grace,
Sweet Marion, comely as the Gentle's race!
If these in younger years I could engage,
Then blush not thou to hear my words of age.
View both the combatants with equal eyes,
Thyself at once the judge, at once the prize.
O dread to load thy tender soul with sin,
For love, I fear, corrupts the judge within.
For if misjudging, thou award'st the day
To him inferior in the sweet essay,
Each tongue shall rank thee with the worst of names,
Deep pierces scandal when 'tis truth that blames.
The perjury shall every age prolong,
To fright the changeful mind from doing wrong.
But if thy sentence speak an upright heart,
Where pride and female error has no part,
Thy name remembered in the feasting days,
The youths shall chant sweet ballads in thy praise,
The lover shall his faithless fair upbraid,
And quote the example of the Piper's Maid.
Then Elspet, Maid of Gallowshiels, take heed,
For infamy or fame attends thy deed.",,8502,"•The poem is incomplete. On the Electric Scotland website the following is reported:
There exists in manuscript another fragmentary poem by Mr Hamilton, called the ""Maid of Gallowshiels."" It is an epic of the heroic-comic kind, intended to celebrate the contest between a piper and a fiddler for the fair Maid of Gallowshiels. Mr Hamilton had evidently designed to extend it to twelve books, but has only completed the first and a portion of the second.","""For love, I fear, corrupts the judge within.""",Court,2013-06-12 19:05:37 UTC,""