work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
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,""
6147,"","Searching ""soul"" and ""lamp"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2006-01-19 00:00:00 UTC,"Let none imagine Grace, that sainted fair,
Descends from Heav'n to lull the sons of care:
Though Grace sits brooding o'er th' obedient soil,
Assiduous duty still demands our toil:
Nor must the cultivator e'er refuse
To watch the flow'rs enrich'd with heav'nly dews,
And with those flow'rs, by gales celestial fann'd,
Form his own garland with a trembling hand.
Though age, the night of life, around me glooms,
The soul, a cheering lamp, the scene illumes,
Fed with the splendour of ethereal rays,
And bright'ning still, as still the frame decays:
Tremendous Death! is this thy conq'ring hour?
This thy full effort of tyrannic pow'r?
The frail, the mould'ring casket is thy prey,
The jewel glitters in immortal day.",,16208,"","""The soul, a cheering lamp, the scene illumes, / Fed with the splendour of ethereal rays, / And bright'ning still, as still the frame decays""","",2009-09-14 19:46:02 UTC,""