"Human Nature's his show-box--your friend, would you know him? / Pull the string, Ruling Passion--the picture will show him."
— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)
Author
Date
1789, 1800
Metaphor
"Human Nature's his show-box--your friend, would you know him? / Pull the string, Ruling Passion--the picture will show him."
Metaphor in Context
Good Lord, what is Man! For as simple he looks,
Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks!
With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil,
All in all he's a problem must puzzle the Devil.
On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labors,
That, like th'old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours.
Human Nature's his show-box--your friend, would you know him?
Pull the string, Ruling Passion--the picture will show him.
What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system,
One trifling particular--Truth--should have miss'd him!
For, spite of his fine theoretic positions,
Mankind is a science defies definitions.
Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe,
And think Human Nature they truly describe:
Have you found this, or t'other? There's more in the wind,
As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find.
But such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan
In the make of that wonderful creature called Man,
No two virtues, whatever relation they claim,
Nor even two different shades of the same,
Though like as was ever twin brother to brother,
Possessing the one shall imply you've the other.
Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks!
With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil,
All in all he's a problem must puzzle the Devil.
On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labors,
That, like th'old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours.
Human Nature's his show-box--your friend, would you know him?
Pull the string, Ruling Passion--the picture will show him.
What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system,
One trifling particular--Truth--should have miss'd him!
For, spite of his fine theoretic positions,
Mankind is a science defies definitions.
Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe,
And think Human Nature they truly describe:
Have you found this, or t'other? There's more in the wind,
As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find.
But such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan
In the make of that wonderful creature called Man,
No two virtues, whatever relation they claim,
Nor even two different shades of the same,
Though like as was ever twin brother to brother,
Possessing the one shall imply you've the other.
Provenance
Searching "ruling passion" in HDIS (Poetry)
Citation
Found in The Works of Robert Burns; With an Account of His Life, and a Criticism on His Writings. To Which Are Prefixed, Some Observations on the Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry. In Four Volumes. (Liverpool: Printed by J. M'Creery, Houghton-Street; for T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, Strand, London; and W. Greech, Edinburgh. Sold also by Bell and Bradfute, P. Hill, and Manners and Miller, Edinburgh; Brash and Reid, and J. Murdoch, Glasgow; J. Brown, Aberdeen; W. Boyd, Dumfries; J. Morrison, Perth; J. Forsyth, Ayr; and by Merritt and Wright, W. Robinson, W. Harding, and E. Rushton, Liverpool, 1800), vol. 2 of 4. <Link to ECCO>
Theme
Ruling Passion
Date of Entry
05/20/2004
