"Come, bright IMAGINATION, come! relume / Thy orient lamp; with recompensing ray / Shine on the Mind, and pierce its gathering gloom / With all the fires of intellectual Day!"
— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for G. Sael
Date
1799
Metaphor
"Come, bright IMAGINATION, come! relume / Thy orient lamp; with recompensing ray / Shine on the Mind, and pierce its gathering gloom / With all the fires of intellectual Day!"
Metaphor in Context
When life's realities the Soul perceives
Vain, dull, perchance corrosive, if she glows
With rising energy, and open throws
The golden gates of Genius, she achieves
His fairy clime delighted, and receives
In those gray paths, deck'd with the thornless rose,
Blest compensation.--Lo! with alter'd brows
Lours the false World, and the fine Spirit grieves;
No more young Hope tints with her light and bloom
The darkening Scene.--Then to ourselves we say,
Come, bright IMAGINATION, come! relume
Thy orient lamp; with recompensing ray
Shine on the Mind, and pierce its gathering gloom
With all the fires of intellectual Day!
(p. 3)
Vain, dull, perchance corrosive, if she glows
With rising energy, and open throws
The golden gates of Genius, she achieves
His fairy clime delighted, and receives
In those gray paths, deck'd with the thornless rose,
Blest compensation.--Lo! with alter'd brows
Lours the false World, and the fine Spirit grieves;
No more young Hope tints with her light and bloom
The darkening Scene.--Then to ourselves we say,
Come, bright IMAGINATION, come! relume
Thy orient lamp; with recompensing ray
Shine on the Mind, and pierce its gathering gloom
With all the fires of intellectual Day!
(p. 3)
Categories
Provenance
Searching in ECCO; Found again searching "mind" and "lamp" in HDIS (Poetry); and again "imagination"
Theme
Mirror and Lamp
Date of Entry
10/19/2005
Date of Review
01/18/2006
