"The Mind, that broods o’er guilty woes / Is like the Scorpion girt by fire"
— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)
Work Title
Date
1813
Metaphor
"The Mind, that broods o’er guilty woes / Is like the Scorpion girt by fire"
Metaphor in Context
The Mind, that broods o’er guilty woes
Is like the Scorpion girt by fire;
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flame around their captive close,
Till inly searched by thousand throes,
And maddening in her ire,
One sad and sole relief she knows –
The sting she nourished for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain,
And darts into her desperate brain:
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like Scorpion girt by fire;
So writhes the mind Remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death?
Is like the Scorpion girt by fire;
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flame around their captive close,
Till inly searched by thousand throes,
And maddening in her ire,
One sad and sole relief she knows –
The sting she nourished for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain,
And darts into her desperate brain:
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like Scorpion girt by fire;
So writhes the mind Remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death?
Provenance
Searching Frank Jenners Wilstach's A Dictionary of Similes.
Date of Entry
12/20/2009
