"What grand ideas crowd my brain! / What images! a lofty train / In beauteous order spring"
— Hamilton, William, of Bangour (1704-1754)
Work Title
Date
1760, 1850
Metaphor
"What grand ideas crowd my brain! / What images! a lofty train / In beauteous order spring"
Metaphor in Context
[...]
What grand ideas crowd my brain!
What images! a lofty train
In beauteous order spring:
As the keen store of feathered fates
Within the braided quiver waits,
Impatient for the wing:
See, see, they mount! The sacred few
Endued with piercing flight,
Alone through darling fields pursue
The ærial regions bright.
This nature gives, her chiefest boast;
But when the bright ideas fly,
Far soaring from the vulgar eye,
To vulgar eyes are lost.
Where nature sows her genial seeds,
A liberal harvest straight succeeds,
Fair in the human soil;
While art, with hard laborious pains,
Creeps on unseen, nor much attains,
By slow progressive toil.
Resembling this, the feeble crow,
Amid the vulgar winged crowd,
Hides in the darkening copse below,
Vain, strutting, garrulous, and loud:
While genius mounts the ethereal height,
As the imperial bird of Jove
On sounding pinions soars above,
And dares the majesty of light.
Then fit an arrow to the tuneful string,
O thou, my genius! warm with sacred flame;
Fly swift, ethereal shaft! and wing
The godlike Theron unto fame.
I solemn swear, and holy truth attest,
That sole inspires the tuneful breast,
That, never since the immortal sun
His radiant journey first begun,
To none the gods did e'er impart
A more exalted mind, or wide-diffusive heart.
Fly, Envy, hence, that durst invade
Such glories, with injurious shade;
Still, with superior lustre bright,
His virtues shine, in number more
Than are the radiant fires of night,
Or sands that spread along the sea-surrounding shore.
What grand ideas crowd my brain!
What images! a lofty train
In beauteous order spring:
As the keen store of feathered fates
Within the braided quiver waits,
Impatient for the wing:
See, see, they mount! The sacred few
Endued with piercing flight,
Alone through darling fields pursue
The ærial regions bright.
This nature gives, her chiefest boast;
But when the bright ideas fly,
Far soaring from the vulgar eye,
To vulgar eyes are lost.
Where nature sows her genial seeds,
A liberal harvest straight succeeds,
Fair in the human soil;
While art, with hard laborious pains,
Creeps on unseen, nor much attains,
By slow progressive toil.
Resembling this, the feeble crow,
Amid the vulgar winged crowd,
Hides in the darkening copse below,
Vain, strutting, garrulous, and loud:
While genius mounts the ethereal height,
As the imperial bird of Jove
On sounding pinions soars above,
And dares the majesty of light.
Then fit an arrow to the tuneful string,
O thou, my genius! warm with sacred flame;
Fly swift, ethereal shaft! and wing
The godlike Theron unto fame.
I solemn swear, and holy truth attest,
That sole inspires the tuneful breast,
That, never since the immortal sun
His radiant journey first begun,
To none the gods did e'er impart
A more exalted mind, or wide-diffusive heart.
Fly, Envy, hence, that durst invade
Such glories, with injurious shade;
Still, with superior lustre bright,
His virtues shine, in number more
Than are the radiant fires of night,
Or sands that spread along the sea-surrounding shore.
Categories
Provenance
Searching "idea" and "crowd" in HDIS (Poetry); found again "brain"
Citation
At least 2 entries in ESTC (1760).
See Poems on Several Occasions. By William Hamilton of Bangour, Esquire. (Edinburgh: Printed for W. Gordon Bookseller in the Parliament Close, 1760). <Link to ECCO>
Text from The Poems and Songs of William Hamilton of Bangour, ed. James Paterson (Edinburgh: Thomas George Stevenson, 1850).
See Poems on Several Occasions. By William Hamilton of Bangour, Esquire. (Edinburgh: Printed for W. Gordon Bookseller in the Parliament Close, 1760). <Link to ECCO>
Text from The Poems and Songs of William Hamilton of Bangour, ed. James Paterson (Edinburgh: Thomas George Stevenson, 1850).
Date of Entry
03/08/2006
