work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3378,Physiognomy,"Searching ""mind"" and ""mirror"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-10-10 00:00:00 UTC,"But to the theme, now laid aside too long,
The baleful burthen of this honest song,
Though all her former functions are no more,
She rules the circle which she served before.
If mothers--none know why--before her quake;
If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake;
If early habits--those false links, which bind
At times the loftiest to the meanest mind--
Have given her power too deeply to instil
The angry essence of her deadly will;
If like a snake she steal within your walls,
Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
If like a viper to the heart she wind,
And leave the venom there she did not find;
What marvel that this hag of hatred works
Eternal evil latent as she lurks,
To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,
And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?
Skilled by a touch to deepen Scandal's tints
With all the kind mendacity of hints,
While mingling truth with falsehood--sneers with smiles--
A thread of candour with a web of wiles;
A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,
To hide her bloodless heart's soul-hardened scheming;
A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,
And, without feeling, mock at all who feel:
With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,--
A cheek of parchment, and an eye of stone.
Mark, how the channels of her yellow blood
Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud,
Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale--
(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
Congenial colours in that soul or face)--
Look on her features! and behold her mind
As in a mirror of itself defined:
Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged--
There is no trait which might not be enlarged:
Yet true to ""Nature's journeymen,"" who made
This monster when their mistress left off trade--
This female dog-star of her little sky,
Where all beneath her influence droop or die.",,8656,"","""Look on her features! and behold her mind / As in a mirror of itself defined.""","",2011-03-28 03:27:19 UTC,""
6165,"",HDIS,2003-12-30 00:00:00 UTC,"Thus Italy was moved;--nor did the chief
Æneas in his mind less tumult feel.
On every side his anxious thought he turns,
Restless, unfix'd, not knowing what to choose.
And as a cistern that in brim of brass
Confines the crystal flood, if chance the sun
Smite on it, or the moon's resplendent orb,
The quivering light now flashes on the walls,
Now leaps uncertain to the vaulted roof:
Such were the wavering motions of his mind.
'Twas night--and weary nature sunk to rest;
The birds, the bleating flocks, were heard no more.
At length, on the cold ground, beneath the damp
And dewy vault, fast by the river's brink,
The father of his country sought repose.
When lo! among the spreading poplar boughs,
Forth from his pleasant stream, propitious rose
The god of Tiber: clear transparent gauze
Infolds his loins, his brows with reeds are crown'd;
And these his gracious words to sooth his care:
(ll. 1-20, pp. 83-4)",,16331,"•I've included entries in both 'Liquid' and 'Optics'.
•First printed in Poems, by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq. in Three Volumes. Vol III. Containing his posthumous poetry, and a sketch of his life. By his kinsman, John Johnson, LL.D., 1815.
","The wavering motions of the mind are like ""quivering light"" reflected off a confined ""crystal flood"" in a brass cistern","",2009-09-14 19:46:32 UTC,""
6185,"","Searching ""mind"" and ""mirror"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-10-23 00:00:00 UTC,"Ceas'd her sweet voice;--applauses loud
Re-thunder through the charmed crowd.
They die away;--and many a strain
Alternate raise the maiden train.
Those airs a Ramsay's pipe had blown,
Those raptures that a Burns had known,
Here, true to nature's feelings, find
A living mirror in each mind.
Last Jessy, ask'd by all the train,
Awak'd thy lovely Flower, Dumblane!
On the sweet air attention hung,
And when she ceas'd applauses rung.",,16363,"","""Here, true to nature's feelings, find / A living mirror in each mind.""","",2009-09-14 19:46:39 UTC,""
6202,"",Searching UTI's Digital General Collection at University of Michigan Library,2005-09-22 00:00:00 UTC,"Periodical literature can hardly be said to create public taste and opinion: I believe it does no more than strongly reflect and thereby concentre and strengthen it. The fashionable journal is expected to be a mirror of public opinion in its own party, a brilliant magnifying mirror, in which the mind of the public may see itself look large and handsome. Woe be to the mirror if it presumes to give pictures and images of its own!--it will fall to the ground, even if not shivered at once by popular indignation. [...]
(p. 367)",2008-05-27,16401,"","""The fashionable journal is expected to be a mirror of public opinion in its own party, a brilliant magnifying mirror, in which the mind of the public may see itself look large and handsome.""",Mirror,2011-07-21 14:12:11 UTC,""
6202,"",Reading,2005-09-22 00:00:00 UTC,"There have been men in all ages, who have been impelled as by an instinct to propose their own nature as a problem, and who devote their attempts to its solution. The first step was to construct a table of distinctions, which they seem to have formed on the principle of the absence or presence of the WILL. Our various sensations, perceptions, and movements were classed as active or passive, or as media partaking of both. A still finer distinction was soon established between the voluntary and the spontaneous. In our perceptions we seem to ourselves merely passive to an external power, whether as a mirror reflecting the landscape, or as a blank canvas on which some unknown hand paints it. For it is worthy of notice, that the latter, or the system of idealism may be traced to sources equally remote with the former, or materialism; and Berkeley can boast an ancestry at least as venerable as Gassendi or Hobbs. These conjectures, however, concerning the mode in which our perceptions originated, could not alter the natural difference of things and thoughts. In the former, the cause appeared wholly external, while in the latter, sometimes our will interfered as the producing or determining cause, and sometimes our nature seemed to act by a mechanism of its own, without any conscious effort of the will, or even against it. Our inward experiences were thus arranged in three separate classes, the passive sense, or what the school-men call the merely receptive quality of the mind; the voluntary, and the spontaneous, which holds the middle place between both. But it is not in human nature to meditate on any mode of action, without enquiring after the law that governs it; and in the explanation of the spontaneous movements of our being, the metaphysician took the lead of the anatomist and natural philosopher. In Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and India the analysis of the mind had reached its noon and manhood, while experimental research was still in its dawn and infancy. For many, very many centuries, it has been difficult to advance a new truth, or even a new error, in the philosophy of the intellect or morals. With regard, however, to the laws that direct the spontaneous movements of thought and the principle of their intellectual mechanism there exists, it has been asserted, an important exception most honorable to the moderns, and in the merit of which our own country claims the largest share. Sir James Mackintosh (who amid the variety of his talents and attainments is not of less repute for the depth and accuracy of his philosophical enquiries, than for the eloquence with which he is said to render their most difficult results perspicuous, and the driest attractive) affirmed in the lectures, delivered by him at Lincoln's Inn Hall, that the law of association as established in the contemporaneity of the original impressions, formed the basis of all true psychology; and any ontological or metaphysical science not contained in such (i. e. empirical) psychology was but a web of abstractions and generalizations. Of this prolific truth, of this great fundamental law, he declared HOBBS to have been the original discoverer, while its full application to the whole intellectual system we owe to David Hartley; who stood in the same relation to Hobbs as Newton to Kepler; the law of association being that to the mind, which gravitation is to matter.
(pp. 89-92)",2008-05-27,16408,"•Chapter 5 titled on the Law of Association
•I've included twice: Mirror and Canvas","""In our perceptions we seem to ourselves merely passive to an external power, whether as a mirror reflecting the landscape, or as a blank canvas on which some unknown hand paints it.""","",2011-07-21 14:14:00 UTC,Chapter 5
6203,"","Searching ""mind"" and ""mirror"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-10-21 00:00:00 UTC,"And though their lustre now was spent and faded,
Yet in my hollow looks and withered mien
The likeness of a shape for which was braided
The brightest woof of genius, still was seen--
One who, methought, had gone from the world's scene,
And left it vacant--'twas her lover's face--
It might resemble her--it once had been
The mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace
Which her mind's shadow cast, left there a lingering trace.
",,16417,•I've inlcuded twice: Mirror and Shadow.,"""'twas her lover's face-- / It might resemble her--it once had been / The mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace / Which her mind's shadow cast, left there a lingering trace""","",2009-09-14 19:46:48 UTC,""
6203,"","Reading Reisner, Thomas A. ""Tablua Rasa: Shelley's Metaphor of Mind."" Ariel IV.2 (197): 90-102. p. 98.",2006-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,"'""Disguise it not--ye blush for what ye hate,
And Enmity is sister unto Shame;
Look on your mind--it is the book of fate--
Ah! it is dark with many a blazoned name
Of misery--all are mirrors of the same;
But the dark fiend who with his iron pen
Dipped in scorn's fiery poison, makes his fame
Enduring there, would o'er the heads of men
Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den.
(ll. 3370-8)",,16428,•I've included twice: Book and Mirror,"""Look on your mind--it is the book of fate-- / Ah! it is dark with many a blazoned name / Of misery--all are mirrors of the same""","",2009-09-14 19:46:51 UTC,"Canto VII, Stanza 20"
6211,"","Searching ""mind"" and ""mirror"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-10-10 00:00:00 UTC,"The lake unruffled, will reflect
A picture fair of earth and skies;
But how distorted its effect,
When ripples o'er the surface rise.
Such mirror is the human mind,
When calm composure gilds our day;
And such, alas! the change we find,
When ruffling passions mark their sway.",,16451,"","""The lake unruffled [i.e., the mind], will reflect / A picture fair of earth and skies; / But how distorted its effect, / When ripples o'er the surface rise.""","",2010-04-01 15:47:16 UTC,""
6211,"",HDIS (Poetry),2010-04-01 15:49:17 UTC,"The lake unruffled, will reflect
A picture fair of earth and skies;
But how distorted its effect,
When ripples o'er the surface rise.
Such mirror is the human mind,
When calm composure gilds our day;
And such, alas! the change we find,
When ruffling passions mark their sway.",,17776,"","""Such mirror is the human mind, / When calm composure gilds our day; / And such, alas! the change we find, / When ruffling passions mark their sway.""","",2010-04-01 15:49:17 UTC,""
8245,"","Reading Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia (London and New York: Verso, 2005), p. 153.",2017-12-15 14:35:56 UTC,"[Note, p. 358] The following remark may assist those for whom it is not too subtle to understand clearly that the individual is only the phenomenon, not the thing in itself. Every individual is, on the one hand, the subject of knowing, i.e., the complemental condition of the possibility of the whole objective world, and, on the other hand, a particular phenomenon of will, the same will which objectifies itself in everything. But this double nature of our being does not rest upon a self-existing unity, otherwise it would be possible for us to be conscious of ourselves in ourselves, and independent of the objects of knowledge and will. Now this is by no means possible, for as soon as we turn into ourselves to make the attempt, and seek for once to know ourselves fully by means of introspective reflection, we are lost in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like the hollow glass globe, from out of which a voice speaks whose cause is not to be found in it, and whereas we desired to comprehend ourselves, we find, with a shudder, nothing but a vanishing spectre.",,25111,"","""Now this is by no means possible, for as soon as we turn into ourselves to make the attempt, and seek for once to know ourselves fully by means of introspective reflection, we are lost in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like the hollow glass globe, from out of which a voice speaks whose cause is not to be found in it, and whereas we desired to comprehend ourselves, we find, with a shudder, nothing but a vanishing spectre.""","",2017-12-15 14:37:21 UTC,Book 4