"Mute is each Syren Passion's faithless song / Check'd and suspended by the solemn scene: / Mute the wild clamours of the giddy throng, / And only heard the "still small voice" within."
— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Work Title
Date
1766
Metaphor
"Mute is each Syren Passion's faithless song / Check'd and suspended by the solemn scene: / Mute the wild clamours of the giddy throng, / And only heard the "still small voice" within."
Metaphor in Context
Not for themselves the toiling artists build,
Not for himself contrives the studious sage:
To distant views by mystic force compell'd,
All give the present to the future age.
Beneath the shelter of this reverend pile
The various schemes of busy care repose:
O'er the dark tombs, along each peopled isle,
The moon's pale beam a faint reflection throws.
Here Death his melancholy pomp displays,
And all his terrors strike on Fancy's eye:
To Fancy's ear each hollow gale conveys,
In chilling sounds, the last expiring sigh.
Mute is each Syren Passion's faithless song
Check'd and suspended by the solemn scene:
Mute the wild clamours of the giddy throng,
And only heard the "still small voice" within.
Ambition sick'ning views the laurel'd bust,
The weak reward for years of rival strife:
While Pleasure's garland withering in the dust,
Confutes the gayer hope of frolic life.
(p. 109)
Not for himself contrives the studious sage:
To distant views by mystic force compell'd,
All give the present to the future age.
Beneath the shelter of this reverend pile
The various schemes of busy care repose:
O'er the dark tombs, along each peopled isle,
The moon's pale beam a faint reflection throws.
Here Death his melancholy pomp displays,
And all his terrors strike on Fancy's eye:
To Fancy's ear each hollow gale conveys,
In chilling sounds, the last expiring sigh.
Mute is each Syren Passion's faithless song
Check'd and suspended by the solemn scene:
Mute the wild clamours of the giddy throng,
And only heard the "still small voice" within.
Ambition sick'ning views the laurel'd bust,
The weak reward for years of rival strife:
While Pleasure's garland withering in the dust,
Confutes the gayer hope of frolic life.
(p. 109)
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Text from Women Writers Online: Elizabeth Carter, Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, with a New Edition of her Poems, Ed. Montagu Pennington, 2 vols. (London: F.C. and J. Rivington, 1816). <Link to WWO><Same edition in Internet Archive>
Date of Entry
06/23/2011
