"Let us the soul in even balance bear; / Content with what we have, and what we are!"

— Welsted, Leonard (1688-1747)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for T. Cooper
Date
1727, 1787
Metaphor
"Let us the soul in even balance bear; / Content with what we have, and what we are!"
Metaphor in Context
An easy and contented mind is all:
On whom, and where it will, let glory fall.
Let us the soul in even balance bear;
Content with what we have, and what we are!

Praise your own arb'rets, and be wise betimes;
Nor envy other men, nor other climes:
Obey not flattering Fancy's gay decoys;
Nor court Campanian hills for pictur'd joys.
Here Nature laughs, and crowns the verdant year,
And Ulubris and Baiæ both are here:
All good you'll taste in your paternal fields,
And find at Banstead more than Tyber yields.
Provenance
Searching "soul" and "balance" in HDIS (Poetry)
Citation
2 hits in ECCO and ESTC (1741, 1787).

The Summum Bonum; or, Wisest Philosophy. In an Epistle to a Friend. By Mr. Welsted. (London: Printed for T. Cooper, 1741). <Link to ESTC>

Found searching in The Works, in Verse and Prose, of Leonard Welsted, Esq; Some Time Clerk in Ordinary at the Office of Ordnance in the Tower of London. Now First Collected. With Historical Notes, and Biographical Memoirs of the Author, by John Nichols. (London: Printed by and for the Editor, in Red-Lion-Passage, Fleet-Street, 1787). <Link to ECCO>
Date of Entry
12/11/2006

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