"What if the head, the eye or ear repin'd / To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?"
— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Date
1733-4
Metaphor
"What if the head, the eye or ear repin'd / To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?"
Metaphor in Context
What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread,
Or hand to toil, aspir'd to be the head?
What if the head, the eye or ear repin'd
To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?
Just as absurd, for any part to claim
To be another in this gen'ral frame:
Just as absurd, to mourn the task or pains,
The great directing Mind of All ordains.
Or hand to toil, aspir'd to be the head?
What if the head, the eye or ear repin'd
To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?
Just as absurd, for any part to claim
To be another in this gen'ral frame:
Just as absurd, to mourn the task or pains,
The great directing Mind of All ordains.
Categories
Provenance
Searching "mind" and "engine" in HDIS (Poetry)
Citation
Over 165 entries in ESTC (1733, 1734, 1735, 1736, 1743, 1744, 1745, 1746, 1747, 1748, 1749, 1750, 1751, 1753, 1754, 1755, 1756, 1758, 1760, 1761, 1762, 1763, 1764, 1766, 1767, 1768, 1770, 1771, 1772, 1774, 1776, 1777, 1778, 1780, 1781, 1783, 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1798, 1799, 1800).
See An Essay on Man, Being the First Book of Ethic epistles. To Henry St. John, L. Bolingbroke. (London: Printed by John Wright, for Lawton Gilliver, 1734). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
See also An Essay on Man: In Epistles to a Friend. (Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, for George Risk, George Ewing, and William Smith, 1734). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading The Poems of Alexander Pope. A One-Volume Edition of the Twickenham Text with Selected Annotations, ed. John Butt. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963).
See An Essay on Man, Being the First Book of Ethic epistles. To Henry St. John, L. Bolingbroke. (London: Printed by John Wright, for Lawton Gilliver, 1734). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
See also An Essay on Man: In Epistles to a Friend. (Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, for George Risk, George Ewing, and William Smith, 1734). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading The Poems of Alexander Pope. A One-Volume Edition of the Twickenham Text with Selected Annotations, ed. John Butt. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963).
Date of Entry
03/25/2013
