"The potent sounds like lightning dart / Resistless through the glowing heart"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for Joseph Johnson
Date
1773
Metaphor
"The potent sounds like lightning dart / Resistless through the glowing heart"
Metaphor in Context
The potent sounds like lightning dart
Resistless through the glowing heart
;
Of power to lift the fixed soul
High o'er Fortune's proud controul;
Kindling deep, prophetic musing;
Love of beauteous death infusing;
Scorn, and unconquerable hate
Of tyrant pride's unhallowed state.
The boy abashed, and half afraid,
Beheld each chaste immortal maid:
Pallas spread her Egis there;
Mars stood by with threatening air;
And stern Diana's icy look
With sudden chill his bosom struck. (pp. 61-2)
Categories
Provenance
HDIS (Poetry); confirmed in ECCO-TCP (with minor variants).
Citation
At least 10 entries in ESTC (1773, 1774, 1776, 1777, 1792).

Barbauld, Mrs. (Anna Letitia), 1743-1825. See Poems (London: Printed for Joseph Johnson, 1773). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>

Some text drawn from The Works of Anna Lætitia Barbauld. With a Memoir by Lucy Aikin (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Browne, and Green, 1825).

Reading McCarthy, William and Kraft, Elizabeth, eds. Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry and Prose (Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002).
Date of Entry
01/03/2004

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.