work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
4339,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2004-07-28 00:00:00 UTC,"Thou know'st the secret Soul's imperial Throne
Surrounded with thick Darkness, like thy own,
Where she to all the Senses Audience gives,
Appoints their Tasks, their Messages receives,
And passes Judgement in her Sov'reign Court
On every Envoy's true or false Report;
How her sole Nod our Motions does controul,
And guide the various Parts to serve the Whole;
Can'st say what diff'rent Turns the Spirits take,
When they of diff'rent Kinds Impressions make;
What vital Springs those Spirits in their Flight
Strike to cause Torment, what to give Delight;
Can'st tell the Manner how the Actors move,
When they excite our Anger or our Love,
By what Contrivance and mechanick Art
Our Passions interrupt the beating Heart;
How they encrease the vital Lab'rour's Toil,
When they constrain the Blood to freeze or boil;
Whence martial Ardour warms the Heroe's Breast,
How shiv'ring Fears th' arterial Flood arrest;
How active Joy dilates the swelling Veins,
And Shame the modest Face with Blushes stains:
Thou know'st these Secrets, and ten thousand more,
Which narrow-sighted Man can ne'er explore,
Who to a high Conceit of Wit arrives,
Yet knows not how he thinks, or moves, or lives,
(pp. 100-1)",2012-01-10,11340,"""Thou"" is God. Alfred performs after a banquet. ","""Can'st say what diff'rent Turns the Spirits take, / When they of diff'rent Kinds Impressions make; / What vital Springs those Spirits in their Flight / Strike to cause Torment, what to give Delight.""",Impressions,2012-01-10 16:58:09 UTC,End of Book III
7509,"","Reading Dennis Todd's Imagining Monsters (University of Chicago Press, 1995), 137.
",2013-07-08 19:49:43 UTC,"I now proceed to Memory, which is nothing but the same Imagination acting without the assistance of exterior Objects. To explain this, we must consider that the first Image which an outward Object imprints on our Brain is very slight; it resembles a thin Vapour which dwindles into nothing, without leaving the least track after it. But if the same Object successively offers itself several times, the Image it occasions thereby increases and strengthens itself by degrees, till at last it acquires such a consistency (if I may so call it) as makes it subsist as long as the Machine itself. A Stock of Images having been thus acquired, they each have their respective little Cell or Lodge, where they go and hide. Yet we must not suppose that they are continually in their Retirement; they would become useless if they were so. But on the contrary, great Numbers of them are always going to and fro; and if one of them chances to go by the Cell or Lodge of another which has the least real or imaginary conformity with it, out pops the retired Image, and immediately joins the wandering one. This never so obviously happens, as when a new Image is introduced into the Brain, who as soon as he appears, occasions great Commotions among all the old Inhabitants who either have, or think they have, any resemblance or relation to the new Comers.
(pp. 186-7)",,21523,"","""To explain this, we must consider that the first Image which an outward Object imprints on our Brain is very slight; it resembles a thin Vapour which dwindles into nothing, without leaving the least track after it. But if the same Object successively offers itself several times, the Image it occasions thereby increases and strengthens itself by degrees, till at last it acquires such a consistency (if I may so call it) as makes it subsist as long as the Machine itself. A Stock of Images having been thus acquired, they each have their respective little Cell or Lodge, where they go and hide.""",Impressions and Rooms,2013-07-08 19:53:17 UTC,""