"Inhaling spirit; from the unfetter'd mind, / By thee sublimed, down to the daily race, / The mixing myriads of thy setting beam."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)


Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for J. Millan
Date
1727
Metaphor
"Inhaling spirit; from the unfetter'd mind, / By thee sublimed, down to the daily race, / The mixing myriads of thy setting beam."
Metaphor in Context
Informer of the planetary train!
Without whose quickening glance their cumbrous orbs
Were brute unlovely mass, inert and dead,
And not, as now, the green abodes of life!
How many forms of being wait on thee!
Inhaling spirit; from the unfetter'd mind,
By thee sublimed, down to the daily race,
The mixing myriads of thy setting beam
.
(p. 40 in Sambrook ed., p. 16 in original)
Categories
Provenance
Reading; text from C-H Lion
Citation
At least 7 entries in ESTC (1727, 1728, 1730, 1731, 1735, 1740). [Also issued as part of The Four Seasons, and Other Poems.]

Poem first published as Summer. A Poem. By James Thomson. (London: Printed for J. Millan, 1727). Second edition in 1728.

Text revised between 1727 and 1746. Searching text from The Poetical Works (1830), checked against earlier editions. Also reading James Sambrook's edition of The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), which reproduces the 1746 edition of Thomson's poem.

Collected in The Seasons, A Hymn, A Poem to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton, and Britannia, a Poem. By Mr. Thomson (1730). <Link to ECCO>
Date of Entry
07/07/2013

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