"Yet, why repine? What, though by bonds confined, / Should bonds enslave the vigour of the mind?"
— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Work Title
Date
w. 1764, published 1820
Metaphor
"Yet, why repine? What, though by bonds confined, / Should bonds enslave the vigour of the mind?"
Metaphor in Context
RECITATIVE
Yet, why repine? What, though by bonds confined,
Should bonds enslave the vigour of the mind?
Have we not cause for triumph when we see
Ourselves alone from idol-worship free?
Are not this very day those rites begun,
Where prostrate error hails the rising sun?
Do not our tyrant lords this day ordain
For superstition's rites and mirth profane?
And should we mourn? should coward virtue fly,
When impious folly rears her front on high?
No; rather let us triumph still the more,
And as our fortune sinks, our wishes soar.
(I.i)
Yet, why repine? What, though by bonds confined,
Should bonds enslave the vigour of the mind?
Have we not cause for triumph when we see
Ourselves alone from idol-worship free?
Are not this very day those rites begun,
Where prostrate error hails the rising sun?
Do not our tyrant lords this day ordain
For superstition's rites and mirth profane?
And should we mourn? should coward virtue fly,
When impious folly rears her front on high?
No; rather let us triumph still the more,
And as our fortune sinks, our wishes soar.
(I.i)
Categories
Provenance
Searching "bond" and "mind" in HDIS (Poetry)
Citation
Reading Roger Lonsdale's The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, and Oliver Goldsmith (London and New York: Longman and Norton: 1972).
Date of Entry
01/06/2012
