work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
4209,Speed of thought,HDIS (Poetry),2003-10-26 00:00:00 UTC,"The trembling Queen (th'Almighty Order giv'n)
Swift from th' Idæan Summit shot to Heav'n.
As some way-faring Man, who wanders o'er
In Thought, a Length of Lands he trod before,
Sends forth his active Mind from Place to Place,
Joins Hill to Dale, and measures Space with Space:
So swift flew Juno to the blest Abodes,
If Thought of Man can match the Speed of Gods.
There sate the Pow'rs in awful Synod plac'd;
They bow'd, and made Obeysance as she pass'd,
Thro' all the brazen Dome: With Goblets crown'd
They hail her Queen; the Nectar streams around.
Fair Themis first presents the golden Bowl,
And anxious asks, what Cares disturb her Soul?
Verse 86. As some way-faring Man , &c.]
The Discourse of Jupiter to Juno being ended, she ascends to Heaven with wonderful Celerity, which the Poet explains by this Comparison. On other Occasions he has illustrated the Action of the Mind by sensible Images from the Motion of the Bodies; here he inverts the Case, and shews the great Velocity of Juno's Flight by comparing it to the Quickness of Thought. No other Comparison could have equall'd the Speed of an heavenly Being. To render this more beautiful and exact, the Poet describes a Traveller who revolves in his Mind the several Places which he has seen, and in an Instant passes in Imagination from one distant Part of the Earth to another. Milton seems to have had it in his Eye in that elevated Passage,
------ The Speed of Gods
Time counts not, tho' with swiftest Minutes wing'd.
As the Sense in which we have explain'd this Passage is exactly literal, as well as truly sublime, one cannot but wonder what should induce both Hobbes and Chapman to ramble so wide from it in their Translations.
This said, went Juno to Olympus high.
As when a Man looks o'er an ample Plain,
To any distance quickly goes his Eye :
So swiftly Juno went with little Pain.
Chapman's is yet more foreign to the Subject,
But as the Mind of such a Man, that hath a great way gone,
And either knowing not his way, or then would let alone
His purpos'd Journey; is distract, and in his vexed Mind
Resolves now not to go, now goes, still many ways inclin'd ------
",,10929,•INTEREST. Reversed metaphor! See explication below.,"""As some way-faring Man, who wanders o'er / In Thought, a Length of Lands he trod before, / Sends forth his active Mind from Place to Place, / Joins Hill to Dale, and measures Space with Space: / So swift flew Juno to the blest Abodes, / If Thought of Man can match the Speed of Gods.""","",2013-06-04 16:27:26 UTC,Book XV
4814,"","",2004-06-15 00:00:00 UTC,"A peevish Boy shall proffer'd Fruit despise;
""Take it, dear Puppy."" No, and yet he dies
If you refuse it. Does not this discover
The froward Soul of a discarded Lover,
Thus reasoning with himself? What! when thus slighted
Shall I return, return though uninvited?
Yes, he shall sure return and lingering wait
At the proud Doors he now presumes to hate.
""Shall I not go if she submissive send,
""Or here resolve, my Injuries shall end?
""Expell'd, recall'd, shall I go back again?
""No; let her kneel; for she shall kneel in vain.""
When lo! his wily Servant well reply'd,
Think not by Rule and Reason, Sir, to guide
What ne'er by Reason or by Measure move,
For Peace and War succeed by Turns in Love,
And while tempestuous these Emotions roll,
And float with blind Disorder in the Soul,
Who strives to fix them by one certain Rule,
May by right Rule and Reason play the Fool.",,12869,•Cross-reference: see the translation of these lines in Duncombe's Horace.,"""For Peace and War succeed by Turns in Love, / And while tempestuous these Emotions roll, / And float with blind Disorder in the Soul.""","",2013-07-16 22:19:41 UTC,"Book II, Satire iii"
4209,"","Reading Dennis Todd, “The ‘blunted arms’ of Dulness: the problem of power in the Dunciad” Studies in Philolgy 79 (1982), 177-204, 186.",2016-03-01 06:19:40 UTC,"This strong and ruling Faculty was like a powerful Planet, which in the Violence of its Course, drew all things within its Vortex. It seem'd not enough to have taken in the whole Circle of Arts, and the whole Compass of Nature; all the inward Passions and Affections of Mankind to supply this Characters, and all the outward Forms and Images of Things for his Descriptions; but wanting yet an ampler Sphere to expatiate in, he open'd a new and boundless Walk for his Imagination, and created a World for himself in the Invention of Fable. That which Aristotle calls the Soul of Poetry, was first breath'd into it by Homer. I shall begin with considering him in this Part, as it is naturally the first, and I speak of it both as it means the Design of a Poem, and as it is taken for Fiction.",,24851,Heterocosm,"""It seem'd not enough to have taken in the whole Circle of Arts, and the whole Compass of Nature; all the inward Passions and Affections of Mankind to supply this Characters, and all the outward Forms and Images of Things for his Descriptions; but wanting yet an ampler Sphere to expatiate in, he open'd a new and boundless Walk for his Imagination, and created a World for himself in the Invention of Fable.""","",2016-03-01 06:19:40 UTC,Preface