"When in the Hall of Smoke they congress hold, / And the sage berry, sun-burnt Mocha bears, / Has clear'd their inward eye: then, smoke-enroll'd, / Their oracles break forth mysterious as of old."
— Thomson, James (1700-1748)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Andrew Millar
Date
1748
Metaphor
"When in the Hall of Smoke they congress hold, / And the sage berry, sun-burnt Mocha bears, / Has clear'd their inward eye: then, smoke-enroll'd, / Their oracles break forth mysterious as of old."
Metaphor in Context
Nor be forgot a tribe, who minded nought
(Old inmates of the place) but state-affairs:
They look'd, perdie, as if they deeply thought;
And on their brow sat every nation's cares;
The world by them is parcel'd out in shares,
When in the Hall of Smoke they congress hold,
And the sage berry, sun-burnt Mocha bears,
Has clear'd their inward eye: then, smoke-enroll'd,
Their oracles break forth mysterious as of old.
(Canto I, ll. 622-30, p. 196)
(Old inmates of the place) but state-affairs:
They look'd, perdie, as if they deeply thought;
And on their brow sat every nation's cares;
The world by them is parcel'd out in shares,
When in the Hall of Smoke they congress hold,
And the sage berry, sun-burnt Mocha bears,
Has clear'd their inward eye: then, smoke-enroll'd,
Their oracles break forth mysterious as of old.
(Canto I, ll. 622-30, p. 196)
Categories
Provenance
HDIS
Citation
Over 40 entries in ECCO, at least 20 in the ESTC (1748, 1749, 1750, 1751, 1752, 1757, 1762, 1763, 1765, 1766, 1767, 1768, 1772, 1773, 1774, 1775, 1776, 1777, 1778, 1780, 1784, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1794, 1795).
See The Castle of Indolence. An Allegorical Poem. Written in Imitation of Spenser by James Thomson. (London: A. Millar, 1748). <Link to ECCO>
Reading James Thomson, Liberty, The Castle of Indolence, and other Poems, ed. James Sambrook. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
See The Castle of Indolence. An Allegorical Poem. Written in Imitation of Spenser by James Thomson. (London: A. Millar, 1748). <Link to ECCO>
Reading James Thomson, Liberty, The Castle of Indolence, and other Poems, ed. James Sambrook. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
Theme
Mind's Eye
Date of Entry
11/24/2003
