work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5960,"",Reading,2003-07-21 00:00:00 UTC,"Let me see: they tell me this is Monday night. Only three days yet to come! If thus restless to day; if my heart thus bounds till its mansion scarcely hold it, what must be my state tomorrow! What next day! What as the hour hastens on; as the sun descends; as my hand touches her in sign of wedded unity, of love without interval; of concord without end.
I must quell these tumults. They will disable me else. They will wear out all my strength. They will drain away life itself. But who could have thought! So soon! Not three months since I first set eyes upon her. Not three weeks since our plighted love, and only three days to terminate suspense and give me all.
I must compel myself to be quiet: to sleep. I must find some refuge from anticipations so excruciating. All extremes are agonies. A joy like this is too big for this narrow tenement. I must thrust it forth; I must bar and bolt it out for a time, or these frail walls will burst asunder. The pen is a pacifyer. It checks the mind's career; it circumscribes her wanderings. It traces out, and compels us to adhere to one path. It ever was my friend. Often has it blunted my vexations; hushed my stormy passions; turned my peevishness to soothing; my fierce revenge to heart-dissolving pity.
(Part II, chapter 23, p. 605; cf. pp. 207-8 in 1800 ed.)",,15853,"•:The beginning of the end. Mervyn to marry. Great stuff about the pen and mental control. (See Clarissa.)
•I've included twice: Wandering and Pen
•The ""all"" of the wedding night had me supposing that Brown would have us think that more than Mervyn's joy must thrust forth. Hints of masturbation?
•Note the heart's mansion and the mind's career.
•A writing or a landscape metaphor? — revised as MOTION.","""The pen is a pacifyer. It checks the mind's career; it circumscribes her wanderings.""",Inhabitants and Writing,2014-10-05 16:51:30 UTC,"Part II, Chapter 23"
5968,Blank Slate,"Searching ""tabula rasa"" in ECCO",2006-10-15 00:00:00 UTC,"The great Mr. Locke, and several other ingenious philosophers, have represented the human intellect, antecedent to its intercourse with external objects, as a tabula rasa, or a substance capable of receiving any impressions, but upon which no original impressions of any kind are stamped. Agreeable to this hypothesis, the soul, while destitute of that knowledge we acquire by experience and observation, is a mere passive being, having no natural principles of action, no power of chusing or refusing, but entirely subjected to receive the first impressions that are made upon it, without the capacity of discovering whether they are proper or improper, whether they tend to its preservation of destruction.
(p. 313)",,15876,"","""The great Mr. Locke, and several other ingenious philosophers, have represented the human intellect, antecedent to its intercourse with external objects, as a tabula rasa, or a substance capable of receiving any impressions, but upon which no original impressions of any kind are stamped.""",Writing,2009-09-14 19:44:58 UTC,Part I. Origin of Selfishness
5973,"","Found again searching ""stamp"" and ""mind"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2003-12-17 00:00:00 UTC,"In gulfs of aweful night we find
The God of our desires;
'Tis there he stamps the yielding mind,
And doubles all its fires.
(ll. 9-12, p. 104)",,15882,"","The ""yielding mind"" may be stamped","",2009-09-14 19:44:59 UTC,""
6027,"","Searching ""engrav"" and ""thought"" in HDIS (Drama)",2005-03-09 00:00:00 UTC,"VILLARS.
Mean you Maria's?--Oh! you little know --her door is shut against the common tribe, who visit but to murder Fame and Time; but to the poor and houseless wanderer, 'tis open as her heart
(Tourly and Jack Analyse appear at the wing and listen)
: --come--she shall greet you with a sister's smiles,--and for myself--
(taking her hand and kissing it,)
pity first stamp'd your story in my breast, and the impression is engrav'd for ever!",,16004,•Reynolds is much given to Writing and Engraving metaphors!
•I've included twice: Engraving and Stamping.,"Pity first stamp'd your story in my breast, and the impression is engrav'd for ever""","",2009-09-14 19:45:23 UTC,"Act II, scene iv"
6052,"","Searching ""engrav"" and ""heart"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-03-09 00:00:00 UTC,"'Now on the bosom of the list'ning Youth
'Impress, engrave the sacred form of Truth;
'Bid them, as varying life unfolds to view,
'Be still thro' all her scenes to honor true;
'True to the man on Friendship's list enroll'd,
'Th' entrusted secret of his soul untold.
'Woe to that Chief, and blasted be his fame,
'Whose mean soul chills Affection's holy flame;
'Forgetting that he once, with zeal impress'd,
'Drank the pure drops that flow'd from Friendship's breast.
",,16051,"","""'Now on the bosom of the list'ning Youth / 'Impress, engrave the sacred form of Truth""","",2009-09-14 19:45:32 UTC,""
6147,Blank Slate,"Searching ""mind"" and ""blank"" in HDIS (poetry)",2005-03-02 00:00:00 UTC,"A subject now arrests the wand'ring lay,
A theme congenial to my closing day:
Say, in the future world, to friendship true,
Shall friends with friends the social pact renew?
Search the deep record of the Sibyl's leaves,
There no instruction the blank mind receives
Bid Science spread her riches to the eye,
Consult her volume--it makes no reply!
Not all the wisdom of the wisest sage
Can break the slumber of the silent page:
In this distress, the soul, entranc'd in fright,
Looks all around, and all around is night.
At length with smiling lip, and cheering eye,
Gay Hope, the Hebe of the Christian sky,
Appears--she mitigates the circling gloom;
And o'er the cheek of Darkness throws a bloom.
Hark! now the Cherub rears her voice divine:
'To soothe the gath'ring cares of man be mine;
'Be mine to raise, endu'd with sacred power,
'The human blossom bending from the shower:
'To those now weeping o'er a kindred urn
'This bland consoling answer I return:",,16204,•REVISIT. How is the blank slate metaphor operating here?,"In the ""deep record of the Sibyl's leaves, / There no instruction the blank mind receives.""","",2009-09-14 19:46:02 UTC,""
6155,"","Reading Reisner, Thomas A. ""Tablua Rasa: Shelley's Metaphor of Mind."" Ariel IV.2 (197): 90-102. p. 94.",2006-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,"O Spirit! through the sense
By which thy inner nature was apprised
Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,
And varied reminiscences have waked
Tablets that never fade;
All things have been imprinted there,
The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,
Even the unshapeliest lineaments
Of wild and fleeting visions
Have left a record there
To testify of earth.
(VII, ll. 49-59)",,16219,"•Reisner notes, ""Although Shelley ostensibly takes Locke's tablet for his analogy of the mind, his own use of it is conspicuously at odds with that intended by the English philosopher"" (94).","""O Spirit! through the sense / By which thy inner nature was apprised / Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled, / And varied reminiscences have waked / Tablets that never fade.""","",2009-09-14 19:46:05 UTC,VII
6163,"","Searching ""soul"" and ""stamp"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-04-08 00:00:00 UTC,"Will you your heavenly Sire's best blessing slight?
Be Dupes by day? and Negroes through the night?
For trifles be betray'd? for bubbles bought?
For toys yield up all Liberty but thought?
Corporeal faculties be moved, or stand,
Like wheels and levers in Mechanic's hand?
Exert your intellectual strength, and skill,
The mere Automatons of others' Will!
Your eyes be blind; or, more than seen, perceive?
Your ears be deaf; breasts more than's meant believe?
Thought, introduc'd, and lodg'd within the head,
Lie dormant, there; or, number'd with the dead.
The brain resembling only large hotel,
Where none but foreign families may dwell;
Like sham ambassadorial shadow, sent
To signify frail Sovereign's false intent.
Perfidious Pimp--or Spy--or abject Scout,
On some base expedition posted out,
To act pert Duns, or Bully's bolder part,
Nor feel one kind emotion move the heart!
Amanuensis, never to digress,
But plant ideas like a printing-press;
Or, graven copper-plate, again to roll
The pristine stamp of proud Employer's Soul.
Still trudging every road, like common hack,
To take Fools' trifles--bring Fops' baggage back.
All native Cogitations' private store,
To celibacy sworn, must breed no more;
But, unproductive, all, in secret cell,
Like insulated Nuns--Monks--Hermits--dwell--
No propagated offspring brought to birth
To speak their wisdom, or their parents' worth.",,16270,"•INTEREST. Printing press. I've included thrice: Printing Press, Engraving, Stamping","""But plant ideas like a printing-press; / Or, graven copper-plate, again to roll / The pristine stamp of proud Employer's Soul.""","",2012-07-03 16:50:26 UTC,""
6180,"","Searching ""ink"" and ""bosom"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-03-27 00:00:00 UTC,"But Scandal has always her mud,
At Merit, poor Merit, to throw;
Of ink has for ever a flood,
To blacken a bosom of snow!
",,16356,"","""Of ink has for ever a flood, / To blacken a bosom of snow!""","",2012-06-27 15:13:39 UTC,Epistle III