"If neither Side turn down or up, / With Loss or Gain, with Fear or Hope; / The Balance always would hang ev'n, / Like Mah'met's Tomb, 'twixt Earth and Heav'n."
— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Jacob Tonson and John Barber
Date
1718
Metaphor
"If neither Side turn down or up, / With Loss or Gain, with Fear or Hope; / The Balance always would hang ev'n, / Like Mah'met's Tomb, 'twixt Earth and Heav'n."
Metaphor in Context
Objections to my general System
May 'rise, perhaps, and I have mist them:
But I can call to my Assistance
Proximity (mark that!) and Distance:
Can prove, that all Things, on Occasion,
Love Union, and desire Adhesion;
That Alma merely is a Scale;
And Motives, like the Weights, prevail.
If neither Side turn down or up,
With Loss or Gain, with Fear or Hope;
The Balance always would hang ev'n,
Like Mah'met's Tomb, 'twixt Earth and Heav'n.
(p. 490, II, ll. 188-199)
May 'rise, perhaps, and I have mist them:
But I can call to my Assistance
Proximity (mark that!) and Distance:
Can prove, that all Things, on Occasion,
Love Union, and desire Adhesion;
That Alma merely is a Scale;
And Motives, like the Weights, prevail.
If neither Side turn down or up,
With Loss or Gain, with Fear or Hope;
The Balance always would hang ev'n,
Like Mah'met's Tomb, 'twixt Earth and Heav'n.
(p. 490, II, ll. 188-199)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Searching in ECCO and ESTC (1718, 1720, 1721, 1725, 1728, 1733, 1734, 1741, 1751, 1754, 1755, 1759, 1768, 1766, 1767, 1769, 1771, 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, 1784, 1790, 1798). See also Prior's Poetical Works (1777, 1779, 1784, 1798). Found in A Collection of English Poets, vol. 10 (1776), The British Poets, vol. 18 (1778), and The Works of the English Poets (1779, 1790). I haven't yet been able to confirm that Alma is in 2 vol. Poems of 1755, 1766, 1767 (texts not available in ECCO).
See Prior's Alma: Or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos published in Poems on Several Occasions (London: Printed for J. Tonson and J. Barber, 1718). <Link to ECCO>
Searching text from Poems on Several Occasions, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1905). Reading The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, ed. H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears. 2 vols. 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971).
See Prior's Alma: Or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos published in Poems on Several Occasions (London: Printed for J. Tonson and J. Barber, 1718). <Link to ECCO>
Searching text from Poems on Several Occasions, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1905). Reading The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, ed. H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears. 2 vols. 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971).
Date of Entry
01/25/2009
