text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"Joyless I hail the solemn gloom,
Joyless I view the pillars vast and rude
Where erst the fool of Superstition trod,
In smoking blood imbrued
And rising from the tomb--
Mistaken homage to an unknown God.
Fancy, whither dost thou stray,
Whither dost thou wing thy way?
Check the rising wild delight--
Ah! what avails this awful sight?
Maria is no more!
Why, curst remembrance, wilt thou haunt my mind?
The blessings past are misery now;
Upon her lovely brow
Her lovelier soul she wore.
Soft as the evening gale
When breathing perfumes through the rose-hedged vale,
She was my joy, my happiness refined.
All hail, ye solemn horrors of this scene,
The blasted oak, the dusky green.
Ye dreary altars, by whose side
The druid-priest, in crimson dyed,
The solemn dirges sung,
And drove the golden knife
Into the palpitating seat of life,
When, rent with horrid shouts, the distant valleys rung.
The bleeding body bends,
The glowing purple stream ascends,
Whilst the troubled spirit near
Hovers in the steamy air;
Again the sacred dirge they sing,
Again the distant hill and coppice-valley ring.
Soul of my dear Maria, haste,
Whilst my languid spirits waste;
When from this my prison free,
Catch my soul, it flies to thee;
Death had doubly armed his dart,
In piercing thee, it pierced my heart.",2009-11-11 17:55:48 UTC,"""Why, curst remembrance, wilt thou haunt my mind?""",2004-06-08 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,"","","Searching ""haunt"" and ""mind"" in HDIS (Poetry)",8441,3212
"Observe the partner of thy future state:
If no strong vice is stamped upon her mind,
Take her; and let her ease thy amorous pain:
A little error proves her human-kind.
",2009-09-14 19:33:38 UTC,"A partner of one's ""future state"" should not have ""strong vice"" ""stamped upon her mind""",2005-04-07 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,"","","Searching ""stamp"" and ""mind"" in HDIS (Poetry)",8551,3289
"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.",2009-09-14 19:33:40 UTC,"""What though Astrea decks my soul in gold, / My mortal lumber trembles with the cold;""",2005-05-31 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,Metal,"",Searching in HDIS (Poetry),8606,3335
"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.",2009-09-14 19:33:40 UTC,"""How shall I touch his iron soul with pain, / Who hears unmoved a multitude complain?""",2005-06-08 00:00:00 UTC,III. Poems written in 1770,"",,Metal,"","Searching ""soul"" and ""iron"" in HDIS (Poetry)",8624,3351
"In thee each virtue found a pleasing cell,
Thy mind was honour, and thy soul divine;
With thee did every god of genius dwell,
Thou wast the Helicon of all the Nine.",2009-09-14 19:33:41 UTC,"""In thee each virtue found a pleasing cell, / Thy mind was honour, and thy soul divine""",2005-08-17 00:00:00 UTC,II. Poems written in 1769,"",,Rooms,"","Searching ""soul"" and ""cell"" in HDIS (Poetry)",8649,3373
"""There writhing Mania sits on Reason's throne,
Or Melancholy marks it for her own,
Sheds o'er the scene a voluntary gloom,
Requests oblivion, and demands the tomb.
And last Association's trains suggest
Ideal ills, that harrow up the breast,
Call for the dead from Time's o'erwhelming main,
And bid departed Sorrow live again.
",2009-09-14 19:45:07 UTC,"""[W]rithing Mania sits on Reason's throne, /Or Melancholy marks it for her own""",2004-07-19 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,"","","Searching ""throne"" and ""reason"" in HDIS (Poetry)",15932,5997
"""As the soft lips and pliant tongue are taught
With other minds to interchange the thought;
And sound, the symbol of the sense, explains
In parted links the long ideal trains;
From clear conceptions of external things
The facile power of Recollection springs.
""Whence Reason's empire o'er the world presides,
And man from brute, and man from man divides;
Compares and measures by imagined lines
Ellipses, circles, tangents, angles, sines;
Repeats with nice libration, and decrees
In what each differs, and in what agrees;
With quick Volitions unfatigued selects
Means for some end, and causes of effects;
All human science worth the name imparts,
And builds on Nature's base the works of Arts.
",2009-09-14 19:45:08 UTC,"""Reason's empire o'er the world presides, / And man from brute, and man from man divides""",2004-08-16 00:00:00 UTC,VII,"",,"","•INTEREST. REVISIT. This stanza should be feature in the entry on ""Empire.""","Searching ""reason"" and ""empire"" in HDIS (Poetry)",15937,5997
"""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!""",2009-09-14 19:45:14 UTC,"""Charms with soft words, and sooths with amorous wiles, / Her iron-hearted Lord,--and Pluto smiles.""",2005-06-07 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,"","","Searching ""heart"" and ""iron"" in HDIS (Poetry)",15955,5997
"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?
",2009-09-14 19:49:38 UTC,"""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.""",2009-03-05 00:00:00 UTC,"",Pineal Gland,,"",Pineal Gland. Interesting passage.,Reading,17275,6496
"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?
",2009-09-14 19:49:38 UTC,"""Sermons, though flowing from the sacred lawn, / Are flimsy wires from reason's ingot drawn.""",2009-03-05 00:00:00 UTC,"","",2009-03-16,Metal,"",Reading,17276,6496