"A female mind like a rude fallow lies; / No seed is sown, but weeds spontaneous rise."
— Ingram, Anne [née Howard; other married name Douglas], Viscountess Irwin (c. 1696-1764)
Date
1736, 1737, 1759, 1744, 1771, 1773
Metaphor
"A female mind like a rude fallow lies; / No seed is sown, but weeds spontaneous rise."
Metaphor in Context
A female mind like a rude fallow lies;
No seed is sown, but weeds spontaneous rise.
As well might we expect, in winter, spring,
As land untilled a fruitful crop should bring;
As well might we expect Peruvian ore
We should possess, yet dig not for the store:
Culture improves all fruits, all sorts we find,
Wit, judgement, sense--fruits of the human mind.
(ll. 1-9, p. 150)
No seed is sown, but weeds spontaneous rise.
As well might we expect, in winter, spring,
As land untilled a fruitful crop should bring;
As well might we expect Peruvian ore
We should possess, yet dig not for the store:
Culture improves all fruits, all sorts we find,
Wit, judgement, sense--fruits of the human mind.
(ll. 1-9, p. 150)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
First published anonymously in The Gentleman's Magazine vol. 6 (December 1736), p. 745. <Link to Google Books> [Reprinted in 1771]
I first encountered the poem while reading Roger Lonsdale's Eighteenth Century Women Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) [in excerpt]. Full poem available in Fairer and Gerrard's Eighteenth-Century Poetry, 3rd ed. (Wiley Blackwell, 2015), pp. 337-40.
Lonsdale finds more reprintings of the poem in The London Magazine (January 1737, repr. in 1759), in Ashley's Cowper's Norfolk Poetical Miscellany (1744), and New Foundling Hospital for Wit, vol. 6 (1773).
I first encountered the poem while reading Roger Lonsdale's Eighteenth Century Women Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) [in excerpt]. Full poem available in Fairer and Gerrard's Eighteenth-Century Poetry, 3rd ed. (Wiley Blackwell, 2015), pp. 337-40.
Lonsdale finds more reprintings of the poem in The London Magazine (January 1737, repr. in 1759), in Ashley's Cowper's Norfolk Poetical Miscellany (1744), and New Foundling Hospital for Wit, vol. 6 (1773).
Date of Entry
09/14/2009
