"Yet potent Nature frankly has bestow'd / Such various gifts amongst the mingl'd Crowd, / That I believe, the dullest of the kind, / Wou'd he but Husband and Manure his Mind, / Might find some Exce'llence there, which well-improv'd / At home might make him Pleas'd, in public Lov'd."
— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
Cambridge
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Date
w. 1687 [published 1907]
Metaphor
"Yet potent Nature frankly has bestow'd / Such various gifts amongst the mingl'd Crowd, / That I believe, the dullest of the kind, / Wou'd he but Husband and Manure his Mind, / Might find some Exce'llence there, which well-improv'd / At home might make him Pleas'd, in public Lov'd."
Metaphor in Context
'Tis true, I think not an impartial dole
Of Sense distributed to every Soul;
So that no Two, but can exactly say,
Each had his Measure, tho a diff'rent way:
Yet potent Nature frankly has bestow'd
Such various gifts amongst the mingl'd Crowd,
That I believe, the dullest of the kind,
Wou'd he but Husband and Manure his Mind,
Might find some Exce'llence there, which well-improv'd
At home might make him Pleas'd, in public Lov'd.
(ll. 16-25, pp. 57-8)
Of Sense distributed to every Soul;
So that no Two, but can exactly say,
Each had his Measure, tho a diff'rent way:
Yet potent Nature frankly has bestow'd
Such various gifts amongst the mingl'd Crowd,
That I believe, the dullest of the kind,
Wou'd he but Husband and Manure his Mind,
Might find some Exce'llence there, which well-improv'd
At home might make him Pleas'd, in public Lov'd.
(ll. 16-25, pp. 57-8)
Categories
Provenance
HDIS
Citation
First published in Dialogues of the Dead and Other Works in Prose and Verse, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge: CUP, 1907). Prior sent the poem to Lord Dorset; it was most likely written in summer of 1687.
Reading The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, eds. H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears. 2 vols. 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971).
Reading The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, eds. H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears. 2 vols. 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971).
Date of Entry
01/05/2004
