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"
5990,"",HDIS (Poetry),2003-12-30 00:00:00 UTC,"Ah, how the human mind wearies herself
With her own wanderings, and, involved in gloom
Impenetrable, speculates amiss!
Measuring, in her folly, things divine
By human; laws inscribed on adamant
By laws of man's device, and counsels fixt
For ever, by the hours that pass and die.
(ll. 1-7, p. 139)",,15925,"•From Cowper's Translations of Milton, 1791-2. First printed in Hayley's The Life, and Posthumous Writings, William Cowper, Esqr., 3 vols. ,1803-4.","""Ah, how the human mind wearies herself / With her own wanderings, and, involved in gloom / Impenetrable, speculates amiss!""",Inhabitants,2013-06-04 17:01:33 UTC,""
6163,Flights of Fancy,"Searching ""imagination"" and ""room"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-08-29 00:00:00 UTC,"Compare Thy works with Heav'n's unerring Word,
And note if nought be sinful, frail, absurd--
Whether its precepts, pure, in every part,
Have mov'd Thy Mind--have influenc'd Thy Heart.
From Reason's dawning, to the recent day,
Did ne'er conception, word, or action, stray?
But every pow'r, and faculty, of Soul,
In every waking moment keep the Whole?
Hast Thou, thro' all that long-protracted length,
Lov'd God with all Thy Heart--Mind--Soul--and Strength?
Hast Thou so manag'd Pow'r, dispos'd of Pelf,
As proves Thou lov'st Thy Neighbour as Thyself?
Ah! Thy proud Buildings publicly declare
What Thy Religion, Love, and Motives, are.
Thy Lawns, Thy Gardens, and Thy Groves, confess,
Thy splendid Furniture--Thy pompous Dress--
Thy crowded Table, and Thy Costly Treat--
Thy brilliant Side-board--and Thy lordly Suite--
Thy public Feastings, and proud Equipage--
All prove what graceless hopes Thy heart engage!
What sensual objects all Thy Soul absorb,
And bind Thy Spirit to this earthly Orb!
Each Passion stir, and stimulate each Lust,
To grasp at emptiness and grapple dust!
Urge on Thy Might, and agitate Thy Mind,
To pounce at shadows, and pursue the wind!
Inflame Affections--whip and spur Thy Will,
For things that ne'er can satisfy, or fill!
Which fetter judgment--rivet Reason's pow'rs,
To what Time terminates, or Death devours!
What Understanding's purest light pervert,
To grope in darkness--grovel in the dirt!
Draw down Ambition from substantial views,
To hunt for empty forms, and fading hues!
Solicit Fancy from celestial flights,
To wander o'er the World for frail delights
And crowd Imagination's rooms, immense,
With what relates alone to Time and Sense!
Faith, still deluded with lov'd Nature's Lies,
And Hope, still eying Earth's deceptive Toys;
Where Charity some cheating trifle spends,
While Folly frustrates Ostentation's ends!",2013-06-04,16311,"•I've included thrice: Crowd, Rooms, Birds
• Reviewed 2009-07-31","""Solicit Fancy from celestial flights, / To wander o'er the World for frail delights / And crowd Imagination's rooms, immense, / With what relates alone to Time and Sense!""",Rooms,2013-06-04 15:23:45 UTC,""
7120,"",Reading,2011-10-25 21:29:02 UTC,"CHORUS OF SPIRITS
From unremembered ages we
Gentle guides and guardians be
Of heaven-oppressed mortality;
And we breathe, and sicken not,
The atmosphere of human thought:
Be it dim, and dank, and gray,
Like a storm-extinguished day,
Travelled o'er by dying gleams;
Be it bright as all between
Cloudless skies and windless streams,
Silent, liquid, and serene;
As the birds within the wind,
As the fish within the wave,
As the thoughts of man's own mind
Float through all above the grave;
We make there our liquid lair,
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
Through the boundless element:
Thence we bear the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee!
(I, ll. 672-91)",,19297,"INTERESTING. Metaphor turned inside out as the similes unroll: the mind is liquid, and the spirits are as liquid as mind... REVISIT.","""And we breathe, and sicken not, / The atmosphere of human thought: / Be it dim, and dank, and gray, / Like a storm-extinguished day, / Travelled o'er by dying gleams; / Be it bright as all between / Cloudless skies and windless streams, / Silent, liquid, and serene; / As the birds within the wind, / As the fish within the wave, / As the thoughts of man's own mind / Float through all above the grave; / We make there our liquid lair, / Voyaging cloudlike and unpent / Through the boundless element.""","",2011-10-25 21:29:02 UTC,Act I