"And is not virtue in mankind / The nutriment that feeds the mind; / Upheld by each good action past, / And still continued by the last?"
— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Author
Work Title
Date
March 13, 1727
Metaphor
"And is not virtue in mankind / The nutriment that feeds the mind; / Upheld by each good action past, / And still continued by the last?"
Metaphor in Context
Must these like empty shadows pass,
Or forms reflected from a glass?
Or mere chimeras in the mind,
That fly, and leave no marks behind?
Does not the body thrive and grow
By food of twenty years ago?
And, had it not been still supplied,
It must a thousand times have died.
Then who with reason can maintain
That no effects of food remain?
And is not virtue in mankind
The nutriment that feeds the mind;
Upheld by each good action past,
And still continued by the last?
Then, who with reason can pretend
That all effects of virtue end?
(p. 480, ll. 51-66)
Or forms reflected from a glass?
Or mere chimeras in the mind,
That fly, and leave no marks behind?
Does not the body thrive and grow
By food of twenty years ago?
And, had it not been still supplied,
It must a thousand times have died.
Then who with reason can maintain
That no effects of food remain?
And is not virtue in mankind
The nutriment that feeds the mind;
Upheld by each good action past,
And still continued by the last?
Then, who with reason can pretend
That all effects of virtue end?
(p. 480, ll. 51-66)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Melinda Alliker Rabb's "'Soft Figures' and 'a Pastes of Composition Rare': Pope, Swift, and Memory" in SECC vol. 19, p. 189.
Citation
Swift, Jonathan. Major Works, ed. Angus Ross and David Woolley (Oxford: OUP, 2008).
Date of Entry
10/21/2003
Date of Review
01/04/2010
