"Reason's empire o'er the world presides, / And man from brute, and man from man divides"
— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for J. Johnson ... by T. Bensley
Date
1803
Metaphor
"Reason's empire o'er the world presides, / And man from brute, and man from man divides"
Metaphor in Context
"As the soft lips and pliant tongue are taught
With other minds to interchange the thought;
And sound, the symbol of the sense, explains
In parted links the long ideal trains;
From clear conceptions of external things
The facile power of Recollection springs.
"Whence Reason's empire o'er the world presides,
And man from brute, and man from man divides;
Compares and measures by imagined lines
Ellipses, circles, tangents, angles, sines;
Repeats with nice libration, and decrees
In what each differs, and in what agrees;
With quick Volitions unfatigued selects
Means for some end, and causes of effects;
All human science worth the name imparts,
And builds on Nature's base the works of Arts.
With other minds to interchange the thought;
And sound, the symbol of the sense, explains
In parted links the long ideal trains;
From clear conceptions of external things
The facile power of Recollection springs.
"Whence Reason's empire o'er the world presides,
And man from brute, and man from man divides;
Compares and measures by imagined lines
Ellipses, circles, tangents, angles, sines;
Repeats with nice libration, and decrees
In what each differs, and in what agrees;
With quick Volitions unfatigued selects
Means for some end, and causes of effects;
All human science worth the name imparts,
And builds on Nature's base the works of Arts.
Categories
Provenance
Searching "reason" and "empire" in HDIS (Poetry)
Date of Entry
08/16/2004
