"[T]hus pale revenge / Unsheaths her murderous dagger; and the hands / Of lust and rapine, with unholy arts, / Watch to o'erturn the barrier of the laws / That keeps them from their prey: thus all the plagues / The wicked bear, or o'er the trembling scene / The tragic muse discloses, under shapes / Of honour, safety, pleasure, ease or pomp, / Stole first into the mind."
— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
W. Bowyer and J. Nichols
Date
1744, 1772, 1795
Metaphor
"[T]hus pale revenge / Unsheaths her murderous dagger; and the hands / Of lust and rapine, with unholy arts, / Watch to o'erturn the barrier of the laws / That keeps them from their prey: thus all the plagues / The wicked bear, or o'er the trembling scene / The tragic muse discloses, under shapes / Of honour, safety, pleasure, ease or pomp, / Stole first into the mind."
Metaphor in Context
Thus ambition grasps
The empire of the soul: thus pale revenge
Unsheaths her murderous dagger; and the hands
Of lust and rapine, with unholy arts,
Watch to o'erturn the barrier of the laws
That keeps them from their prey: thus all the plagues
The wicked bear, or o'er the trembling scene
The tragic muse discloses, under shapes
Of honour, safety, pleasure, ease or pomp,
Stole first into the mind. Yet not by all
Those lying forms which fancy in the brain
Engenders, are the kindling passions driven,
To guilty deeds; nor reason bound in chains,
That vice alone may lord it: oft adorn'd
With solemn pageants, folly mounts the throne,
And plays her idiot-anticks, like a queen.
A thousand garbs she wears; a thousand ways
She wheels her giddy empire.
(p. 73-4, Bk. III, ll. 53-70)
The empire of the soul: thus pale revenge
Unsheaths her murderous dagger; and the hands
Of lust and rapine, with unholy arts,
Watch to o'erturn the barrier of the laws
That keeps them from their prey: thus all the plagues
The wicked bear, or o'er the trembling scene
The tragic muse discloses, under shapes
Of honour, safety, pleasure, ease or pomp,
Stole first into the mind. Yet not by all
Those lying forms which fancy in the brain
Engenders, are the kindling passions driven,
To guilty deeds; nor reason bound in chains,
That vice alone may lord it: oft adorn'd
With solemn pageants, folly mounts the throne,
And plays her idiot-anticks, like a queen.
A thousand garbs she wears; a thousand ways
She wheels her giddy empire.
(p. 73-4, Bk. III, ll. 53-70)
Categories
Provenance
HDIS (Poetry)
Citation
Text from Mark Akenside, The Poems Of Mark Akenside (London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1772).
Compare Mark Akenside, The Pleasures of the Imagination (London: 1744). <Link to Google Books>
Reading The Pleasures of Imagination (Otley, England: Woodstock Books, 2000), which reprints A. L. Barbauld's 1795 edition.
Compare Mark Akenside, The Pleasures of the Imagination (London: 1744). <Link to Google Books>
Reading The Pleasures of Imagination (Otley, England: Woodstock Books, 2000), which reprints A. L. Barbauld's 1795 edition.
Date of Entry
09/14/2009
Date of Review
06/11/2011
