work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3335,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2005-05-31 00:00:00 UTC,"Interest, thou universal god of men,
Wait on the couplet and reprove the pen;
If aught unwelcome to thy ears shall rise,
Hold jails and famine to the poet's eyes,
Bid satire sheathe her sharp avenging steel,
And lose a number rather than a meal.
Nay, prithee, honour, do not make us mad,
When I am hungry something must be had:
Can honest consciousness of doing right
Provide a dinner or a bed at night?
What though Astrea decks my soul in gold,
My mortal lumber trembles with the cold;
Then, cursed tormentor of my peace, begone!
Flattery's a cloak, and I will put it on.",,8606,"","""What though Astrea decks my soul in gold, / My mortal lumber trembles with the cold;""",Metal,2009-09-14 19:33:40 UTC,""
3336,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2005-05-31 00:00:00 UTC,"Sprite of Segowen
speaks.
Deceiving gold was once my only toy,
With it my soul within the coffer lay,
It did the mastery of my life employ,
By night my mistress, and my jub by day.
Once, as I dozing in the witch-hour lay,
Thinking how best to filch the orphan's bread,
And from the helpless take their goods away,
I from the skyën heard a voice, which said:
""Thou sleepest; but lo! Satan is awake,
Some deed that's holy do, or he thy soul will take.""",,8607,"","""Deceiving gold was once my only toy, / With it my soul within the coffer lay""",Metal,2009-09-14 19:33:40 UTC,Stanza XXV
3348,"","Searching ""heart"" and ""iron"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-06-07 00:00:00 UTC,"Now up green banks, through level fields of grass
With heavy hearts the fatal spot we pass,
Where Indian rage prevailed, by murder fired,
And warriors brave by savage hands expired;
Where bloody Butler's iron-hearted crew,
Doomed to the flames the weak submitting few;
While screams of horror[1] pierced the midnight wood,
And the dire axe drank deep of human blood.
Obscured with mud, and drenched with soaking rain,
Through pools of splashing mire we drove amain,
Night darkening around us; when in lucky hour,
Led by its light we reached a cottage door;
There welcomed in, we blest our happy lot,
And all the drudgery of the day forgot.
A noble fire its blazing front displayed,
Clean shelves of dazzling pewter round arrayed,
Where rows of ruddy apples, ranged with care,
With grateful fragrance filled the balmy air;
Our bard (chief orator in times like these,)
Though frank, yet diffident, and fond to please,
In broken German joked with all around,
Told who we were, from whence and whither bound;
The cottage group a ready opening made,
And ""welcome friends,"" the little Dutchman said.
Well pleased, our guns and knapsacks we resigned,
Th'adjoining pump or running stream to find;
There washed our boots, and entering, took our seat,
Stript to the trousers in the glowing heat.
The mindful matron spread her table near,
Smoking with meat, and filled with plenteous cheer;
And, supper o'er, brought forth and handed round
A massy bowl with mellow apples crowned;
For all our wants a mother's care expressed,
And pressed us oft, and picked us out the best;
But Duncan smiled, and often seemed to seek
More tempting fruit in Susan's glowing cheek;
Where such sweet innocence and meekness lay
As fairly stole our pilot's heart away:
He tried each art the evening to prolong,
And cheered the passing moments with a song,
So sadly tender, with such feelings raised,
That all but Susan with profusion praised;
She from his glance oft turned her glistening eye,
And paid in tears and many a stifled sigh.",,8621,"•The footnote gives, ""The massacre here alluded to, took place after the battle of 3rd July, 1778, which was fought near this spot. The small body of American troops were commanded by the brave, humane, and intelligent officer, Colonel Butler; the tories and savages were headed by another Colonel Butler, of a very different description. Were I disposed to harrow up the feelings of the reader, I might here enlarge on the particulars of this horrible affair; but I choose to decline it. Those who wish to see a detail of the whole are referred to the Philadelphia Universal Magazine for March 20, 1797, p. 390.""","""Where bloody Butler's iron-hearted crew, / Doomed to the flames the weak submitting few""",Metal,2009-09-14 19:33:40 UTC,""
3351,"","Searching ""soul"" and ""iron"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-06-08 00:00:00 UTC,"How shall I brand with infamy a name
Which bids defiance to all sense of shame?
How shall I touch his iron soul with pain,
Who hears unmoved a multitude complain?
A multitude made wretched by his hand,
The common curse and nuisance of the land.
Holland, of thee I sing--infernal wretch!
Say, can thy power of mischief further stretch?
Is there no other army to be sold,
No town to be destroyed for bribes and gold?
Or wilt thou rather sit contented down,
And starve the subject to enrich the crown?
That when the treasury can boast supplies,
Thy pilfering genius may have exercise;
Whilst unaccounted millions pay thy toil,
Thou art secure if Bute divides the spoil;
Catching his influence from the best of kings,
Vice broods beneath the shadow of his wings;
The vengeance of a nation is defied,
And liberty and justice set aside.
Distinguished robber of the public, say,
What urged thy timid spirit's hasty way?
She lived in the protection of a king.
Did recollection paint the fate of Byng?
Did conscience hold that mirror to thy sight,
Or Aylyffe's ghost accompany thy flight?
Is Bute more powerful than the sceptred hand,
Or art thou safer in a foreign land?
In vain, the scene relinquished, now you grieve,
Cursing the moment you were forced to leave
The ruins on the Isle of Thanet built,
The fruits of plunder, villany, and guilt.
When you presume on English ground to tread,
Justice will lift her weapon at your head.
Contented with the author of your state,
Maintain the conversation of the great.
Be busy in confederacy and plot,
And settle what shall be on what is not;
Display the statesman in some wild design,
Foretell when North will tumble and resign,
How long the busy Sandwich, mad for rule,
Will lose his labour and remain a fool.
But your accounts, the subject of debate,
Are much beneath the notice of the great.
Let bribed exchequer-tellers find them just,
Which, on the penalty of place, they must;
Before they're seen your honesty is clear,
And all will evidently right appear.",,8624,"","""How shall I touch his iron soul with pain, / Who hears unmoved a multitude complain?""",Metal,2009-09-14 19:33:40 UTC,III. Poems written in 1770
3365,"","Searching ""heart"" and ""steel"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-06-11 00:00:00 UTC,"'From weeping relations, regardlessly torn,
Her unthinking youths to the battle are borne;
There, train'd amid slaughter and ruin to wade,
They toil in the heart-steeling, barbarous trade.
What crowds, hurried on by the terrible call,
Pale, ghastly, and blood-covered carcases fall!
Earth heaves with the heaps, still resigning their breath,
And friends, foes, and kindred, lie wallowing in death.",,8639,Part II. --English Poems.,"""There, train'd amid slaughter and ruin to wade, / They toil in the heart-steeling, barbarous trade.""",Metal,2014-02-27 21:52:08 UTC,""
5997,"","Searching ""heart"" and ""iron"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-06-07 00:00:00 UTC,"""Love led the Sage through Death's tremendous porch,
Cheer'd with his smile, and lighted with his torch;--
Hell's triple Dog his playful jaws expands,
Fawns round the God, and licks his baby hands;
In wondering groups the shadowy nations throng,
And sigh or simper, as he steps along;
Sad swains, and nymphs forlorn, on Lethe's brink,
Hug their past sorrows, and refuse to drink;
Night's dazzled Empress feels the golden flame
Play round her breast, and melt her frozen frame;
Charms with soft words, and sooths with amorous wiles,
Her iron-hearted Lord,--and Pluto smiles.--
His trembling Bride the Bard triumphant led
From the pale mansions of the astonish'd dead;
Gave the fair phantom to admiring light,--
Ah, soon again to tread irremeable night!""",,15955,"","""Charms with soft words, and sooths with amorous wiles, / Her iron-hearted Lord,--and Pluto smiles.""","",2009-09-14 19:45:14 UTC,""
6475,Magnetism,Reading,2009-01-21 00:00:00 UTC,"Monticello, March 14, 1820. Dear Sir, A continuation of poor health makes me an irregular correspondent. I am, therefore, your debtor for the two letters of January 20th and February 21st. It was after you left Europe that Dugald Stewart, concerning whom you inquire, and Lord Dare, second son of the Marquis of Lansdowne, came to Paris. They brought me a letter from Lord Wycombe, whom you knew. I became immediately intimate with Stewart, calling mutually on each other and almost daily, during their stay at Paris, which was of some months. Lord Dare was a young man of imagination, with occasional flashes indicating deep penetration, but of much caprice, and little judgment. He has been long dead, and the family title is now, I believe, in the third son, who has shown in Parliament talents of a superior order. Stewart is a great man, and among the most honest living. I have heard nothing of his dying at top, as you suppose. Mr. Ticknor, however, can give you the best information on that subject, as he must have heard particularly of him when in Edinburgh, although I believe he did not see him. I have understood he was then in London superintending the publication of a new work. I consider him and Tracy as the ablest metaphysicians living; by which I mean investigators of the thinking faculty of man. Stewart seems to have given its natural history from facts and observations; Tracy its modes of action and deduction, which he calls Logic and Ideology; and Cabanis, in his Physique et Morale de l'Homme, has investigated anatomically, and most ingeniously, the particular organs in the human structure which may most probably exercise that faculty. And they ask why may not the mode of action called thought, have been given to a material organ of peculiar structure, as that of magnetism is to the needle, or of elasticity to the spring by a particular manipulation of the steel. They observe that on ignition of the needle or spring, their magnetism and elasticity cease. So on dissolution of the material organ by death, its action of thought may cease also, and that nobody supposes that the magnetism or elasticity retire to hold a substantive and distinct existence. These were qualities only of particular conformations of matter; change the conformation, and its qualities change also. Mr. Locke, you know, and other materialists, have charged with blasphemy the spiritualists who have denied the Creator the power of endowing certain forms of matter with the faculty of thought. These, however, are speculations and subtleties in which, for my own part, I have little indulged myself. When I meet with a proposition beyond finite comprehension, I abandon it as I do a weight which human strength cannot lift, and I think ignorance, in these cases, is truly the softest pillow on which I can lay my head. Were it necessary, however, to form an opinion, I confess I should, with Mr. Locke, prefer swallowing one incomprehensibility rather than two. It requires one effort only to admit the single incomprehensibility of matter endowed with thought, and two to believe, first that of an existence called spirit, of which we have neither evidence nor idea, and then secondly how that spirit, which has neither extension nor solidity, can put material organs into motion. These are things which you and I may perhaps know ere long. We have so lived as to fear neither horn of the dilemma. We have, willingly, done injury to no man; and have done for our country the good which has fallen in our way, so far as commensurate with the faculties given us. That we have not done more than we could, cannot be imputed to us as a crime before any tribunal. I look, therefore, to the crisis, as I am sure you also do, as one ""qui summum nec metuit diem nec optat."" In the meantime be our last as cordial as were our first affections.",2009-11-30,17211,"","""And they [Stewart, Tracy, Cabanis] ask why may not the mode of action called thought, have been given to a material organ of peculiar structure, as that of magnetism is to the needle, or of elasticity to the spring by a particular manipulation of the steel.""","",2009-11-30 16:01:07 UTC,""
6496,"",Reading,2009-03-05 00:00:00 UTC,"Hervenis, harping on the hackneyed text,
By disquisitions is so sore perplexed,
He stammers,--instantaneously is drawn
A bordered piece of inspiration-lawn,
Which being thrice unto his nose applied,
Into his pineal gland the vapours glide;
And now again we hear the doctor roar
On subjects he dissected thrice before.
I own at church I very seldom pray,
For vicars, strangers to devotion, bray.
Sermons, though flowing from the sacred lawn,
Are flimsy wires from reason's ingot drawn;
And, to confess the truth, another cause
My every prayer and adoration draws:
In all the glaring tinctures of the bow,
The ladies front me in celestial row.
(Though, when black melancholy damps my joys,
I call them nature's trifles, airy toys;
Yet when the goddess Reason guides the strain,
I think them, what they are, a heavenly train.)
The amorous rolling, the black sparkling eye,
The gentle hazel, and the optic sly;
The easy shape, the panting semi-globes,
The frankness which each latent charm disrobes;
The melting passions, and the sweet severe,
The easy amble, the majestic air;
The tapering waist, the silver-mantled arms,
All is one vast variety of charms.
Say, who but sages stretched beyond their span,
Italian singers, or an unmanned man,
Can see Elysium spread upon their brow,
And to a drowsy curate's sermon bow?
",2009-03-16,17276,"","""Sermons, though flowing from the sacred lawn, / Are flimsy wires from reason's ingot drawn.""",Metal,2009-09-14 19:49:38 UTC,""