"Thou [Eagle] type of wit and sense confin'd, / Cramp'd by the oppressors of the mind, / Who study downward on the ground."
— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)
Work Title
Date
June 1751, 1752
Metaphor
"Thou [Eagle] type of wit and sense confin'd, / Cramp'd by the oppressors of the mind, / Who study downward on the ground."
Metaphor in Context
Yet useful still, hold to the throng--
Hold the reflecting glass,--
That not untutor'd at thy wrong
The passenger may pass:
Thou type of wit and sense confin'd,
Cramp'd by the oppressors of the mind,
Who study downward on the ground;
Type of the fall of Greece and Rome;
While more than mathematic gloom,
Envelopes all around.
(p. 4, ll. 31-40)
Hold the reflecting glass,--
That not untutor'd at thy wrong
The passenger may pass:
Thou type of wit and sense confin'd,
Cramp'd by the oppressors of the mind,
Who study downward on the ground;
Type of the fall of Greece and Rome;
While more than mathematic gloom,
Envelopes all around.
(p. 4, ll. 31-40)
Provenance
Reading
Citation
9 entries in ECCO and ESTC (1750, 1752, 1764, 1766, 1772, 1777, 1780, 1791, 1798). First published in The Student, or The Oxford Monthly Miscellany (July, 1751) and Poems on Several Occasions. Frequently republished in The Oxford Sausage.
Text from The Poems of the Late Christopher Smart ... Consisting of His Prize Poems, Odes, Sonnets, and Fables, Latin and English Translations: Together With Many Original Compositions, Not Included in the Quarto Edition. To Which Is Prefixed, an Account of His Life and Writings, Never Before Published. 2 vols. (London: Printed and Sold by Smart and Cowslade; and sold by F. Power and Co., 1791).
See The Student, or, the Oxford, and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany. Vol. 2. (Oxford, 1750), pp. 356-7. <Link to ECCO>
Reading in Katrina Williamson and Marcus Walsh, eds., Christopher Smart: Selected Poems (New York: Penguin Books, 1990).
Text from The Poems of the Late Christopher Smart ... Consisting of His Prize Poems, Odes, Sonnets, and Fables, Latin and English Translations: Together With Many Original Compositions, Not Included in the Quarto Edition. To Which Is Prefixed, an Account of His Life and Writings, Never Before Published. 2 vols. (London: Printed and Sold by Smart and Cowslade; and sold by F. Power and Co., 1791).
See The Student, or, the Oxford, and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany. Vol. 2. (Oxford, 1750), pp. 356-7. <Link to ECCO>
Reading in Katrina Williamson and Marcus Walsh, eds., Christopher Smart: Selected Poems (New York: Penguin Books, 1990).
Date of Entry
06/20/2011
