"And yet, slap dash, is All again / In every Sinew, Nerve, and Vein. / [the mind] Runs here and there, like Hamlet's Ghost; / While every where She rules the roast."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Jacob Tonson and John Barber
Date
1718
Metaphor
"And yet, slap dash, is All again / In every Sinew, Nerve, and Vein. / [the mind] Runs here and there, like Hamlet's Ghost; / While every where She rules the roast."
Metaphor in Context
Here Matthew said:

Alma in Verse; in Prose, the Mind,
By Aristotle's Pen defin'd,
Throughout the Body squat or tall,
Is, bonâ fide, All in All.
And yet, slap dash, is All again
In every Sinew, Nerve, and Vein.
Runs here and there, like Hamlet's Ghost;
While every where She rules the roast
.
(p. 471, ll. 13-21)
Provenance
HDIS
Citation
Searching in ECCO and ESTC (1718, 1720, 1721, 1725, 1728, 1733, 1734, 1741, 1751, 1754, 1755, 1759, 1768, 1766, 1767, 1769, 1771, 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, 1784, 1790, 1798). See also Prior's Poetical Works (1777, 1779, 1784, 1798). Found in A Collection of English Poets, vol. 10 (1776), The British Poets, vol. 18 (1778), and The Works of the English Poets (1779, 1790). I haven't yet been able to confirm that Alma is in 2 vol. Poems of 1755, 1766, 1767 (texts not available in ECCO).

See Prior's Alma: Or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos published in Poems on Several Occasions (London: Printed for J. Tonson and J. Barber, 1718). <Link to ECCO>

Searching text from Poems on Several Occasions, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1905). Reading The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, ed. H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears. 2 vols. 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971).
Date of Entry
02/27/2004
Date of Review
01/23/2009

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.