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,""
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"
6213,"","Searching ""mind"" and ""mirror"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-06-28 00:00:00 UTC,"""And who was I? a slender youth and tall,
""In manner awkward, and with fortune small;
""With visage pale, my motions quick and slow,
""That fall and rising in the spirits show;
""For none could more by outward signs express
""What wise men lock within the mind's recess;
""Had I a mirror set before my view,
""I might have seen what such a form could do;
""Had I within the mirror truth beheld,
""I should have such presuming thoughts repell'd
""But awkward as I was, without the grace
""That gives new beauty to a form or face,
""Still I expected friends most true to prove,
""And grateful, tender, warm, assiduous love.",,16473,From Poetical Works (1838). Work out citation. REVISIT,"One may behold ""the mirror truth"" within","",2009-09-14 19:46:58 UTC,""
6232,"","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,"MAHMUD
The times do cast strange shadows
On those who watch and who must rule their course,
Lest they, being first in peril as in glory,
Be whelmed in the fierce ebb:--and these are of them.
Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me
As thus from sleep into the troubled day;
It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea,
Leaving no figure upon memory's glass.
Would that--no matter. Thou didst say thou knewest
A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle
Of strange and secret and forgotten things.
I bade thee summon him:--'tis said his tribe
Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.
(ll. 124-136)",,16512,"•I've included thrice: Tempest, Sea, Glass","""Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me / As thus from sleep into the troubled day; / It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea, / Leaving no figure upon memory's glass""","",2009-09-14 19:47:07 UTC,""
6233,"","Searching ""mind"" and ""mirror"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-10-21 00:00:00 UTC,"Seen thus destitute,
What are the greatest? They must speak beyond
A thousand homilies. When Raphael went,
His heavenly face the mirror of his mind,
His mind a temple for all lovely things
To flock to and inhabit--when He went,
Wrapt in his sable cloak, the cloak he wore,
To sleep beneath the venerable Dome,
By those attended, who in life had loved,
Had worshipped, following in his steps to Fame,
('Twas on an April-day, when Nature smiles)
All Rome was there. But, ere the march began,
Ere to receive their charge the bearers came,
Who had not sought him? And when all beheld
Him, where he lay, how changed from yesterday,
Him in that hour cut off, and at his head
His last great work; when, entering in, they looked
Now on the dead, then on that master-piece,
Now on his face, lifeless and colourless,
Then on those forms divine that lived and breathed,
And would live on for ages--all were moved;
And sighs burst forth, and loudest lamentations.",,16516,•I've included twice: Mirror and Temple,"""When Raphael went, / His heavenly face the mirror of his mind, / His mind a temple for all lovely things / To flock to and inhabit""","",2009-09-14 19:47:08 UTC,""
7120,"",Reading,2011-10-25 20:51:41 UTC,"As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, but it creates by combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous existence in the mind of man or in Nature, but because the whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought and with the contemporary condition of them. One great poet is a masterpiece of Nature which another not only ought to study but must study. He might as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe as exclude from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption in any but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained, unnatural and ineffectual. A poet is the combined product of such internal powers as modify the nature of others, and of such external influences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but both. Every man's mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of Nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected and in which they compose one form. Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not escape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod, between Æschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante and Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope; each has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions are arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, I am willing to confess that I have imitated.
(xii-xiii)
",,19284,"","""He might as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe as exclude from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary.""","",2011-10-25 20:51:41 UTC,Preface
7120,"",Reading,2011-10-25 20:52:50 UTC,"As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, but it creates by combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous existence in the mind of man or in Nature, but because the whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought and with the contemporary condition of them. One great poet is a masterpiece of Nature which another not only ought to study but must study. He might as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe as exclude from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption in any but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained, unnatural and ineffectual. A poet is the combined product of such internal powers as modify the nature of others, and of such external influences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but both. Every man's mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of Nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected and in which they compose one form. Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not escape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod, between Æschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante and Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope; each has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions are arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, I am willing to confess that I have imitated.
(xii-xiii)",,19285,"","""Every man's mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of Nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected and in which they compose one form.""","",2011-10-25 20:52:50 UTC,Preface