"O what can words, / The weak interpreters of mortal thoughts, / Or what can thoughts (tho' wild of wing they rove / Thro' the vast concave of th'aetherial round) / If to the Heav'n of Heavens they'd win their way / Advent'rous, like the birds of night they're lost, / And delug'd in the flood of dazzling day."
— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)
Work Title
Place of Publication
Cambridge
Date
April 1750, 1791
Metaphor
"O what can words, / The weak interpreters of mortal thoughts, / Or what can thoughts (tho' wild of wing they rove / Thro' the vast concave of th'aetherial round) / If to the Heav'n of Heavens they'd win their way / Advent'rous, like the birds of night they're lost, / And delug'd in the flood of dazzling day."
Metaphor in Context
Hail, wond'rous Being, who in pow'r supreme
Exists from everlasting, whose great Name
Deep in the human heart, and every atom,
The Air, the Earth or azure Main contains,
In undecypher'd characters is wrote--
INCOMPREHENSIBLE -- O what can words,
The weak interpreters of mortal thoughts,
Or what can thoughts (tho' wild of wing they rove
Thro' the vast concave of th'aetherial round)
If to the Heav'n of Heavens they'd win their way
Advent'rous, like the birds of night they're lost,
And delug'd in the flood of dazzling day.--
(p. 17, ll. 1-12)
Exists from everlasting, whose great Name
Deep in the human heart, and every atom,
The Air, the Earth or azure Main contains,
In undecypher'd characters is wrote--
INCOMPREHENSIBLE -- O what can words,
The weak interpreters of mortal thoughts,
Or what can thoughts (tho' wild of wing they rove
Thro' the vast concave of th'aetherial round)
If to the Heav'n of Heavens they'd win their way
Advent'rous, like the birds of night they're lost,
And delug'd in the flood of dazzling day.--
(p. 17, ll. 1-12)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
3 entries in ECCO and ESTC (1750, 1752, 1756, 1791).
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 On the Eternity of the Supreme Being. A Poetical Essay. by Christopher Smart, M. a. Fellow of Pembroke-Hall in the University of Cambridge. (Cambridge : printed by J. Bentham Printer to the University. Sold by W. Thurlbourn in Cambridge, C. Bathurst in Fleet-Street, R. Dodsley at Tully’s Head in Pall-Mall, London; and J. Hildyard at York, 1750). <Link to ESTC>
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 On the Eternity of the Supreme Being. A Poetical Essay. by Christopher Smart, M. a. Fellow of Pembroke-Hall in the University of Cambridge. (Cambridge : printed by J. Bentham Printer to the University. Sold by W. Thurlbourn in Cambridge, C. Bathurst in Fleet-Street, R. Dodsley at Tully’s Head in Pall-Mall, London; and J. Hildyard at York, 1750). <Link to ESTC>
Reading in Katrina Williamson and Marcus Walsh, eds., Christopher Smart: Selected Poems (New York: Penguin Books, 1990).
Date of Entry
06/21/2011
Date of Review
06/20/2011
