"What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide: / And Middle natures, how they long to join, / Yet never pass th'insuperable line!"
— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Date
1733-4
Metaphor
"What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide: / And Middle natures, how they long to join, / Yet never pass th'insuperable line!"
Metaphor in Context
Far as Creation's ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends:
Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
What modes of sight, betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green:
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood:
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew.
How Instinct varies, in the groveling swine,
Compar'd, half reas'ning elephant! with thine;
'Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier,
For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and Reflection, how ally'd;
What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide:
And Middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th'insuperable line!
Without this just Gradation could they be
Subjected these to those, or all to thee?
The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy reason all those pow'rs in one?
(pp. 17-19 in 1734 London ed.; cf. ll. 207-231, pp. 512-3 in Butt's ed.)
The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends:
Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
What modes of sight, betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green:
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood:
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew.
How Instinct varies, in the groveling swine,
Compar'd, half reas'ning elephant! with thine;
'Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier,
For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and Reflection, how ally'd;
What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide:
And Middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th'insuperable line!
Without this just Gradation could they be
Subjected these to those, or all to thee?
The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy reason all those pow'rs in one?
(pp. 17-19 in 1734 London ed.; cf. ll. 207-231, pp. 512-3 in Butt's ed.)
Categories
Provenance
Rereading Pope's Essay
Citation
Over 165 entries in ESTC (1733, 1734, 1735, 1736, 1743, 1744, 1745, 1746, 1747, 1748, 1749, 1750, 1751, 1753, 1754, 1755, 1756, 1758, 1760, 1761, 1762, 1763, 1764, 1766, 1767, 1768, 1770, 1771, 1772, 1774, 1776, 1777, 1778, 1780, 1781, 1783, 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1798, 1799, 1800).
See An Essay on Man, Being the First Book of Ethic epistles. To Henry St. John, L. Bolingbroke. (London: Printed by John Wright, for Lawton Gilliver, 1734). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
See also An Essay on Man: In Epistles to a Friend. (Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, for George Risk, George Ewing, and William Smith, 1734). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading The Poems of Alexander Pope. A One-Volume Edition of the Twickenham Text with Selected Annotations, ed. John Butt. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963).
See An Essay on Man, Being the First Book of Ethic epistles. To Henry St. John, L. Bolingbroke. (London: Printed by John Wright, for Lawton Gilliver, 1734). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
See also An Essay on Man: In Epistles to a Friend. (Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, for George Risk, George Ewing, and William Smith, 1734). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading The Poems of Alexander Pope. A One-Volume Edition of the Twickenham Text with Selected Annotations, ed. John Butt. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963).
Date of Entry
05/27/2004
