work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5724,"","",2004-07-12 00:00:00 UTC,"Is there no eminent revenge above,
For violated oaths and perjur'd love?
Shall ruthless man our miseries begin,
Yet wanton irresponsive to the sin?
The brilliant reptile marshall'd every art,
To brave the prejudice and seize my heart.
False as Amphissian waves his accents flow'd,
Which hide Destruction 'neath the liquid road:
With cruel skill he bent the servile knee,
And stood, like Ruin, 'twixt my good and me.
His toils, like furies in th' Æolian wind,
Bestorm'd the placid current of my mind;
And made th' ideal billows, raging, rise,
Till their rude vehemence had brav'd the skies:
So quick th' Enormities ingulph'd me in,
I look'd a Demon ere I knew the sin.
Once Hope, in garish raiments, cheer'd my eye,
Renerv'd my wish, and check'd the unborn sigh:
Ah, sweet Seducer! whither art thou flown?
While social Demons seize thy silver throne;
'Tis thine to sprinkle manna o'er the mind,
'Tis thine to temper the ferocious wind,
'Tis thine to renovate the fancy's springs,
Raise the worn maid, and glad despairing kings.
",,15255,•I've included twice: in Liquid and in Tempest,"The ""placid current"" of the mind may be bestorm'd so that ""th' ideal billows, raging, rise"" ","",2009-09-14 19:43:10 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,""
5987,Stream of Consciousness,Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2003-12-29 00:00:00 UTC,"Dear Anna--between friend and friend,
Prose answers every common end;
Serves, in a plain and homely way,
To express the occurrence of the day;
Our health, the weather, and the news,
What walks we take, what books we choose,
And all the floating thoughts we find
Upon the surface of the mind.
(ll. 109-168, pp. 263-5)",,15922,"•Published in William Hayley's The Life, and Posthumous Writings, William Cowper, Esqr., 3 vols. ,1803-4.","""And all the floating thoughts we find / Upon the surface of the mind.""","",2018-06-18 15:42:56 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,""
7264,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2012-06-27 18:54:42 UTC," Three sprigs of Hecate in three districts born;
The Horse-guards, York, and Grub-street did adorn;
The first, in matchless mummery was clever,
And sold her mother, Common Sense, for ever.
The second beldam all the rest surpast,
In ease and arrogance--to mould the last;
As Nature's powers could no farther go,
To make a third, she join'd the other two;
Who calls mankind to marvel at her dealing,
And gets her pence by--literary stealing.
Such beldams as these ne'er encounter'd before,
And ne'er will again, until Time is no more;
They met in the World, and shook hands like Scotch cousins,
And were wedded by Fate, to get monsters by dozens.
These witches agreed,
In an hour of--need,
As the only means left them to fatten and feed,
To mount all at once, on Apollo's own steed;
And, by joining their stock, like three empyric doctors,
To gorge on men's vices, like bailiffs and proctors,
The first, a vile sybil, who seeks paupers huts,
To coax little spinsters with ginger-bread nuts:
Gave lies and salt-petre;
Some malice, some metre;
A few pointless strokes,
Old songs and stale jokes;
With witless bon mots from a vile memorandum;
Which the witch did essay,
Once to weave in a play,
But Pit, Box, or Gods could not stand 'em.
The second presented some well-temper'd fuel,
To kindle a flame in the World's busy ball,
As prejudice, pique, or occasion should call;
With ample decoctions of weak water-gruel;
Some cowslips half wither'd, and ill gather'd daisies,
An ounce of crampt wit, and a pound of strange phrases;
Which she stole on the side of the Parnassian mountain,
When she sipt the foul streams from the helicon fountain.
The third,
More absurd,
Than the iron-fed bird;
And whose brains lacked juice like an over-squeezed curd,
Had nothing of value to give but her--Word.
Except a small treatise 'gainst--running in debt;
And some tomes of the chaste Aretine,
With a few comic traits of the fair Antoinette,
When she wanders to see and be seen.",,19802,"","""The third, / More absurd, / Than the iron-fed bird; / And whose brains lacked juice like an over-squeezed curd, / Had nothing of value to give but her--Word.""","",2012-06-27 18:55:07 UTC,""
7934,"",Reading,2014-06-19 16:51:54 UTC,"In all private misfortunes, in pain, in sickness, in sorrow, the weakest man, when his friend, and still more when a stranger visits him, is immediately impressed with the view in which they are likely to look upon his situation. Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance. His own view of his situation immediately recurs upon him. He abandons himself, as before, to sighs and tears and lamentations; and endeavours, like a child that has not yet gone to school, to produce some sort of harmony between his own grief and the compassion of the spectator, not by moderating the former, but by importunately calling upon the latter.
(text from from econlib.org, III.i.65; cf. pp. 145-6 in Liberty Fund ed.) ",,24007,"","""Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance.""","",2014-06-19 16:51:54 UTC,""
7934,"",Reading,2014-06-19 19:32:25 UTC,"This universal benevolence, how noble and generous soever, can be the source of no solid happiness to any man who is not thoroughly convinced that all the inhabitants of the universe, the meanest as well as the greatest, are under the immediate care and protection of that great, benevolent, and all-wise Being, who directs all the movements of nature; and who is determined, by his own unalterable perfections, to maintain in it, at all times, the greatest possible quantity of happiness. To this universal benevolence, on the contrary, the very suspicion of a fatherless world, must be the most melancholy of all reflections; from the thought that all the unknown regions of infinite and incomprehensible space may be filled with nothing but endless misery and wretchedness. All the splendour of the highest prosperity can never enlighten the gloom with which so dreadful an idea must necessarily over-shadow the imagination; nor, in a wise and virtuous man, can all the sorrow of the most afflicting adversity ever dry up the joy which necessarily springs from the habitual and thorough conviction of the truth of the contrary system.
(text from http://www.econlib.org, VI.ii.45; cf. p. 235 in Liberty Fund ed.)",,24029,"","""All the splendour of the highest prosperity can never enlighten the gloom with which so dreadful an idea must necessarily over-shadow the imagination; nor, in a wise and virtuous man, can all the sorrow of the most afflicting adversity ever dry up the joy which necessarily springs from the habitual and thorough conviction of the truth of the contrary system.""","",2014-06-19 19:32:25 UTC,""