work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5614,"",HDIS,2003-12-18 00:00:00 UTC,"I was a stricken deer that left the herd
Long since; with many an arrow deep infixt
My panting side was charged when I withdrew
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There was I found by one who had himself
Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore
And in his hands and feet the cruel scars.
With gentle force soliciting the darts
He drew them forth, and heal'd and bade me live.
Since then, with few associates, in remote
And silent woods I wander, far from those
My former partners of the peopled scene,
With few associates, and not wishing more.
Here much I ruminate, as much I may,
With other views of men and manners now
Than once, and others of a life to come.
I see that all are wanderers, gone astray,
Each in his own delusions; they are lost
In chase of fancied happiness, still wooed
And never won. Dream after dream ensues,
And still they dream that they shall still succeed,
And still are disappointed; rings the world
With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,
And add two-thirds of the remainder half,
And find the total of their hopes and fears
Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay
As if created only, like the fly
That spreads his motley wings in the eye of noon,
To sport their season and be seen no more.
The rest are sober dreamers, grave and wise,
And pregnant with discoveries new and rare.
Some write a narrative of wars and feats
Of heroes little known, and call the rant
An history; describe the man, of whom
His own coevals took but little note,
And paint his person, character and views,
As they had known him from his mother's womb.
They disentangle from the puzzled skein
In which obscurity has wrapp'd them up,
The threads of politic and shrewd design
That ran through all his purposes, and charge
His mind with meanings that he never had,
Or having, kept conceal'd. Some drill and bore
The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn
That He who made it and reveal'd its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age.
Some more acute and more industrious still
Contrive creation; travel nature up
To the sharp peak of her sublimest height,
And tell us whence the stars; why some are fixt,
And planetary some; what gave them first
Rotation, from what fountain flow'd their light.
Great contest follows, and much learned dust
Involves the combatants, each claiming truth,
And truth disclaiming both. And thus they spend
The little wick of life's poor shallow lamp,
In playing tricks with nature, giving laws
To distant worlds and trifling in their own.
Is 't not a pity now that tickling rheums
Should ever tease the lungs and blear the sight
Of oracles like these? Great pity too,
That having wielded the elements, and built
A thousand systems, each in his own way,
They should go out in fume and be forgot?
Ah! what is life thus spent? and what are they
But frantic who thus spend it? all for smoke,--
Eternity for bubbles, proves at last
A senseless bargain. When I see such games
Play'd by the creatures of a Power who swears
That he will judge the earth, and call the fool
To a sharp reckoning that has lived in vain;
And when I weigh this seeming wisdom well
And prove it in the infallible result
So hollow and so false,--I feel my heart
Dissolve in pity, and account the learn'd,
If this be learning, most of all deceived.
Great crimes alarm the conscience, but she sleeps
While thoughtful man is plausibly amused.
Defend me therefore common sense, say I,
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up!
(Bk. III, ll. 108-90, pp. 165-7)",2008-12-03,15010,"•INTEREST. I love this bit at the end about academics and their empty buckets (to put it anachronistically)...
CROSS-REFERENCE: Sterne's metaphor from Tristram Shandy","""Threads of politic and shrewd design"" that charge the mind with meanings may be (or not, as it were) disentangled from ""the puzzled skein""","",2015-11-24 21:55:03 UTC,""
7158,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2012-01-09 18:58:42 UTC,"Muse! were we rich in land, or stocks,
We'd send Sir Fletcher a gold box;
Who lately, to the world's surprize,
Advis'd his Sovereign to be wise.
The zeal of cits shou'd ne'er surpass us,
We'd make him speaker of Parnassus.
Or could I boast the mimic eye
Of Townshend, or of Bunbury,
Whose art can catch, in comic guise,
""The manners living as they rise,""
And find it the same easy thing
To hit a Jollux or a king;
I'd hangings weave, in fancy's loom,
For Lady Norton's dressing room.",,19428,"","""I'd hangings weave, in fancy's loom / For Lady Norton's dressing room.""","",2012-01-09 18:58:42 UTC,""
5638,"","Searching ""passion"" and ""horse"" in HDIS (Drama)",2012-07-05 16:58:36 UTC,"JACK.
Don't be frighten'd, Mrs. Phoebe! you have nothing to fear: I have seen my error, and thoroughly repent of it.
PHOEBE.
'Tis well you have, Sir.
JACK.
Very true, 'tis a happy reformation-- but who can command himself at all times, Mrs. Phoebe? Where's the man that can do it? I was surpriz'd, taken unawares, passion ran away with me like an unbroke horse: but I have got him under now; I can govern him with a twine of thread.
PHOEBE.
'Tis well you can, Sir.
(IV)",,19872,"","""I was surpriz'd, taken unawares, passion ran away with me like an unbroke horse: but I have got him under now; I can govern him with a twine of thread.""",Beasts,2012-07-05 16:58:36 UTC,Act IV
5452,"","Searching ""heart"" in PGDP",2013-06-21 19:48:27 UTC,"MY DEAR FRIEND: 'Avoir du monde' is, in my opinion, a very just and happy expression for having address, manners, and for knowing how to behave properly in all companies; and it implies very truly that a man who hath not those accomplishments is not of the world. Without them, the best parts are inefficient, civility is absurd, and freedom offensive. A learned parson, rusting in his cell, at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, he knows nothing of man, for he hath not lived with him; and is ignorant of all the various modes, habits, prejudices, and tastes, that always influence and often determine him. He views man as he does colors in Sir Isaac Newton's prism, where only the capital ones are seen; but an experienced dyer knows all their various shades and gradations, together with the result of their several mixtures. Few men are of one plain, decided color; most are mixed, shaded, and blended; and vary as much, from different situations, as changeable silks do form different lights. The man 'qui a du monde' knows all this from his own experience and observation: the conceited, cloistered philosopher knows nothing of it from his own theory; his practice is absurd and improper, and he acts as awkwardly as a man would dance, who had never seen others dance, nor learned of a dancing-master; but who had only studied the notes by which dances are now pricked down as well as tunes. Observe and imitate, then, the address, the arts, and the manners of those 'qui ont du monde': see by what methods they first make, and afterward improve impressions in their favor. Those impressions are much oftener owing to little causes than to intrinsic merit; which is less volatile, and hath not so sudden an effect. Strong minds have undoubtedly an ascendant over weak ones, as Galigai Marachale d'Ancre very justly observed, when, to the disgrace and reproach of those times, she was executed for having governed Mary of Medicis by the arts of witchcraft and magic. But then ascendant is to be gained by degrees, and by those arts only which experience and the knowledge of the world teaches; for few are mean enough to be bullied, though most are weak enough to be bubbled. I have often seen people of superior, governed by people of much inferior parts, without knowing or even suspecting that they were so governed. This can only happen when those people of inferior parts have more worldly dexterity and experience, than those they govern. They see the weak and unguarded part, and apply to it they take it, and all the rest follows. Would you gain either men or women, and every man of sense desires to gain both, 'il faut du monde'. You have had more opportunities than ever any man had, at your age, of acquiring 'ce monde'. You have been in the best companies of most countries, at an age when others have hardly been in any company at all. You are master of all those languages, which John Trott seldom speaks at all, and never well; consequently you need be a stranger nowhere. This is the way, and the only way, of having 'du monde', but if you have it not, and have still any coarse rusticity about you, may not one apply to you the 'rusticus expectat' of Horace?
(III.ccxlv, LONDON, April 30, O. S. 1752.)",,21120,INTEREST. USE IN ENTRY,"""A learned parson, rusting in his cell, at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, he knows nothing of man, for he hath not lived with him; and is ignorant of all the various modes, habits, prejudices, and tastes, that always influence and often determine him. He views man as he does colors in Sir Isaac Newton's prism, where only the capital ones are seen; but an experienced dyer knows all their various shades and gradations, together with the result of their several mixtures. Few men are of one plain, decided color; most are mixed, shaded, and blended; and vary as much, from different situations, as changeable silks do form different lights.""",Optics,2013-06-21 19:48:27 UTC,""